Undocumented

As much as there is to criticize about "Undocumented," I have to admit it does a very audacious thing, at least for a horror picture made on the caliber and budget of cheapsploitation classics like "Baker County" and "I Spit on Your Grave": it forces you to actually turn the camera eye on yourself and your beliefs on illegal immigration, whatever they may be, and then confront the very real, but often unseen, after shocks of those beliefs.

Pretty boy and girl Scott Mechlowicz and Alona Tol head up a group of five scarily naive grad students who are doing their thesis on the plight of illegals and their often fatal journeys across the border by...get this: actually aiding them in their trek. If you can get past this admittedly foolhardy and absurd premise, the rest of the film is actually *easier* to swallow, and that's what makes it so much harder to watch and, by turns, to look away from.

On arriving on New Mexico soil, they are immediately ambushed by a gang of paramilitary "patriots" led by "Z" (an insanely chilling Peter Stormare who remains masked for virtually the entire film). What follows is nothing we haven't seen before in the "Hostel" films: ritual humiliation, torture, and full-on carnage, but...this time it's not for the lark of a few rich and twisted businessmen to get their rocks off. No, these sadists actually have a point to make and, for me at least, this really catapulted this snuff box of a movie into a very discomfiting and visceral space in my brain.

"Undocumented" isn't the first horror film to shove hatred into our line of sight and then force us to ingest it, but it does it in such a convincing stylized nightmare way to make it difficult to shake off. More than a few people I've talked to have had a rough time forgetting this film purely because much of Stormare's didactic prattling has inadvertently (or not) come from their own mouths at one time or another. It's disquieting in a way few horror films manage to achieve because, unlike high-handed circle jerks such as "Funny Games," you can see where the villain's bile originates.

In addition to Stormare's tour-de-sicko turn, Mechlowicz continues his run of quietly breakout performances: from "Mean Creek" to "Gone" to this film, he seems bent on forcing you to look past his air-brushed looks by turning in very convincing portraits of deeply-troubled, morally conflicted heroes and villains. The fact that he effectively 180's you from believing his character a pompous a-hole to someone you feel genuine pity for is pretty amazing in itself.

Look, this isn't Citizen Kane. It's not even Citizen Ruth...newcomer Chris Peckover doesn't have the chops of Alexander Payne or Orson Welles. Not yet, anyway. Still this isn't your big brother's crappy little torture flick from the turn of the millennium. No, this one is a bit too true to life for something you'll forget that easily. Even if you wish you could.

I'm all about horror movies, I'm always looking for the next best thing so I have an acquired taste and know when something works and doesn't in the horror industry part of the movies. There are many great horror films out there but only a certain few really push the edge of what makes a out of the ordinary smashing hit horror movie. This movie does that, its a rare breed of great horror that has came out in the last decade.

Obviously movies cant cater to everyone's taste and especially in horror as everyone has limits on what is deemed acceptable more so then many other types. The only reason I guess I mention this is the low rating given at the time I viewed it was 5.8 which to me is a blunder beyond blunders. This movie, has all the aspects you want in a horror movie from, all of the aspects everything;scary,gripping,intense,relentless,etc. There really is no lull or give through out this movie, not one second, every second is like a fine wine of horror that's the only way to describe this movie.

I could write a book on why this movie is great but ill just say that in thousands of horror movies out there, there are a few that stand out and once in awhile one gets it all right and this is one of those!

Travis (Scott Mechlowicz), Liz (Alona Tal), Davie (Greg Serano), and Jim (Kevin Weisman) are making a documentary about the abuses suffered by undocumented immigrants. They join Davie's cousin Alberto (Yancey Arias) and his family crossing the border when they are intercepted by a private militia. They are enlisted to film the horrors that follow.

This is a low-budget horror piggybacking on some immediate modern political issues. It's illegal immigration with a healthy dose of Abu Ghraib. The main characters don't get enough time to present themselves. It may work better to have only two filmmakers which would allow them more screen time to fill in their roles. The most annoying is the usual hand-held shaky camera work with some in night vision. There's too much of it and it's not necessary. I get it. They're an indie doc film crew. The premise has some promise but it needs some better imagination to spice it up. It needs to have some fun with this horror setup.

This movie reminded me of The Most Dangerous Game where a hunter grew bored with hunting animals and turned to hunting humans instead.This hunter lived alone on a remote island and relied on the surrounding hidden rocks for the shipwrecks that supplied his victims. And so with Undocumented. The humans in this movie, the undocumented immigrants, would never be missed or could never be tracked. I found the movie very hard to watch but it was an effective a warning of man's inhumanity to man as you could get. Do I think that this could really happen......yes! Peter Stormare was very convincing as the psychopathic leader, Z, and I thought the acting was strong all round with an especially fine performance by Scott Mechlowicz as the lead journalist. This film was tight, tense and unforgiving to the senses but it's a story that needed to be told to remind us all that we are all brothers and sisters no matter where we come from or what our circumstances. And yes, we all have a Z inside of us waiting for that spark. Proceed with caution.

I found it to be an underrated and disturbing movie. The story is something different with a documentary crew that is forced to record the things that the patriot group does to the immigrants. It's built-up pretty well with introducing the characters and them getting captured by the sadistic radicals. The movie itself is disturbing with the things they do to these people and is pretty graphic on how they do it. There are those types of people out there that make the movie more unsettling on the topic their are doing. The movie has a creepy atmosphere with it taking place in a compound that is filled with armed man and rooms with disturbing things in it. Also, the climax is pretty suspenseful, with the characters fighting and surviving against the group.

There's a couple of flaws with the movie, like it's gets repetitive with the characters trying to escape and fight back but ends up failing until the climax, which gets pretty tedious. And it gets somewhat predictable with the characters' actions.