Cinematical

Travel advisory: if you ever find yourself walking aimlessly under the snake-dripping treetops of an uncharted Amazonian jungle with no food or water, and the only person who shows up to help you looks like the Brazilian Roy Scheider, fire your travel agent. Turistas, an expensive horror movie from the newly christened Fox Atomic logo, is notable for two things: some impressive natural scenery and for fetishizing something that is normally more of a given in the horror genre -- the white-woman-in-distress motif. The story concerns a ragtag group of 'gringos' -- the word is used about 100 times -- who stray off course during some South American holiday-making and end up in the clutches of a mad surgeon with a colonialism-chip on his shoulder. He intends to remove their vital organs and bundle them off to the black market. Once an unlucky gringo is strapped to the operating gurney, they are forced to simultaneously watch their own evisceration and listen to the doctor's quips, like: "I'd also take the skin from your lily-white ass, but it doesn't travel."

Needless to say, creepiness is the wavelength the film wants to travel on, as opposed to the usual buffet of boo-moments. Fair enough, but aside from those unfortunate transplant sessions, there are only a couple of moments that really deliver on that level. One occurs in the opening moments of the film, when the turistas, who clump together on foot after the tour bus they are all sharing crashes, encounter an unaccompanied Brazilian child in the street. A friendly attempt to snap a photo of the kid nearly sets off an international incident, with the angry parents rushing into the frame, spitting curses and threats in Portuguese. It's a good 'back away slowly' moment. A more serious culture clash comes when the group, led by an Australian beach bunny called Pru (Melissa George) and a sensitive jock called Alex (Josh Duhamel) unwittingly arrive at the jungle home of the evil surgeon. Because they don't speak the lingo, they stand idly by, checking their watches, as the doctor and his henchmen walk around them and between them like incurious sharks, all the while chatting in Portuguese about how they are going to slice and dice them.

Together, those two intriguing mini-scenes comprise maybe ten minutes of screen time. Much of the rest of the movie is given over by director John Stockwell to long stretches of scenic overload, both before and after the turistas realize that they are in trouble. The dialogue is often sparse enough to create a documentary feel. Early on, we get extended, talk-free takes of our heroes hiking through the jungle, cavorting topless on the beach in front of appreciative locals and drinking heavily in one of those neon-tinged rave sequences where you know that the next cut will be to everyone lying face-first in the sand the next morning. The latter portion of the film also contains a long, wordless stretch in the form of a 'swim chase' sequence, which sounds more exciting than it is. Some of the turistas attempt to evade their captors by swimming into a waterway that honeycombs through a network of caves. (Somewhere in here, there's a lovely shot of a steaming waterfall, but that may have been punched up by CGI -- hard to tell these days)

The meat of the film, so to speak, involves the gruesome organ snatching scenes, which, given the pronounced racial motivations of the doctor, may qualify as some kind of over-the-top hate crime. To a medical know-nothing like myself, it seems unrealistic that a 'patient' could be kept awake and responsive (and calm enough to listen to a rant about how they deserve all of this because of their ancestors) while having their innards removed, piece by piece. It's hard to imagine that there would even be a pause in the screaming, either from pain or shock or outrage, or some combination of the three. Not that I really have any desire to know the answer. Medical gore, for my money, is more or less the last stop in provoking a reaction from an audience. It doesn't require any kind of artistry or craftsmanship to precede it -- it's a stand-alone stunt, like the carnival worker who bites the head off a chicken. It's designed to make you put your hands over your eyes and squeal.

A final note about the cinematography: The location shooting, at Gruta Azul and other Brazilian paradise coves, is arguably worth the admission price alone. I'm not sure if there's any kind of Academy recognition for location scouting, but if there is, consider this year's award locked up. There hasn't been a 'find' like the locales in this film since the 2000 flop The Beach, at least. You might have to go even further back to find a good comparison. Apparently, some of the shooting was even undertaken in locations -- deep tunnels inside water-filled caves -- that had never been filmed before for a major production like this one. The network of deep underground passageways and cavernous interiors, where the extended climax is staged, is truly jumping-off-the-screen-beautiful. If you're in the market for a tropical vacation and you don't mind sitting through blood-soaked transplants in the middle of your video brochure, then Turistas might be just the thing for you.