Undocumented

The idea behind undocumented is truly terrifying. It would not surprise me to find that something similar to this goes on near the US border. However, as a film it is just a run-of-the-mill average torture-porn.

This film won't win any awards for creativity, writing, or acting. But for those who just want to watch a gory flick that appeals to your sense of empathy it does deliver. The gore is believable and there are plenty of gut-wrenching emotional scenes.

This isn't a thinking film. You won't come out of it scratching your head, ready to discuss its deeper implications. But it has more heart than your average slasher film.

Avid horror fans will not be impressed, but it's not a bad flick for the average film-going Joe.

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.

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 noted that this movie got a 7.1 and thought it sounded interesting. However after about 40 minutes or so I began to have my suspicions. In reality after watching it I now know that I was duped. The other reviewer who guessed the movie's production crew must have been the ones who voted is on the right path. At best this movie is a 'nothing else on not even a re-run of a movie I only kinda want to watch". It's not terrible but it's 100% predictable. There are no brain cells required to watch it. In fact my sore head hurts more now than it has suffered this movie. The characters are completely transparent, as are any twists (oh wait there aren't any at all) and the plot is rather obvious. The violence is needless and without any menace so doesn't serve the plot at all. I guess the central message gets through. If you want to fuel your hatred of rednecks then this movie is for you.

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.