Typical tourists

So, the grand plan for this odious month of March is to post a review of something EVERY DAY until April Fool's rears its jovial head. Movies, CDs, concerts, books and playlists I add to the mp3 player are all game, as are any suggestions made by you. If I miss a day, I'll make it up with two reviews the next. I'll try to keep the length manageable. Such a deal! Let's get to it.

"Turistas"
(2006)
Marketed as a "Hostel" knock-off, this dumb "thriller" has only a tenuous connection to Eli Roth's mean little picture from earlier in the year. I saw the soon-to-be-released unrated version at a Fangoria Weekend of Horrors screening last Saturday, but for the tiny amount of gore it contained, it may as well have been the neutered theatrical version. Director John Stockwell previously gave us such non-horror flicks as "Blue Crush" and "Crazy/Beautiful," and also starred in the '80s teen classic "My Science Project." Considering most of "Turistas" is concerned with beautiful scenery and photogenic people partying, Stockwell is well-suited to the job. The plot follows a group of white tourists whose bus breaks down in the Brazilian jungle. The interchangeable gringos decide to whoop it up at a beachside resort they encounter, ever so slowly coming to the realization that they might be in danger.

Alas, there is a gang of toughs who kidnap tourists and harvest their organs. A mildly psychotic doctor is in charge of the gut extraction, and the movie's single gore sequence comes as he removes one sedated-but-awake girl's liver and kidneys while lecturing her and her companion about how much he hates foreigners who leech off Brazil's resources. This happens roughly an hour in, and is the flick's only thematic connection to "Hostel," the "Turistas" doctor's xenophobic rancor lacking the decadent menace of that film's human monsters. The rest of "Turistas" degenerates into a dull series of chase and hide sequences that requires the tourists to swim from cave to cave underwater. I seriously lost track of who was alive and who was swimming where at this point - there were too many undefined protagonists, and I didn't care about any of them. I couldn't even root for the villains because they are as tepid as the heroes, their leader neither menacing nor charismatic. Call it "Wrong Turn in Paradise," a travelogue, an action flick, an excuse to ogle semi-bare twentysomething flesh. Despite its perfunctory stabs at suspense and shocks, you cannot rightly call "Turistas" a horror movie, no matter where your video store will shelve it.