Tuesday, October 28, 2008
DVD review: Shiver (Eskalofrío)
Shiver doesn’t like to throw around words like “vampire,” but it certainly knows how to get its point across.
“I kill monsters to forget I’m one myself,” Santi (Junio Valverde) tells his best friend in an arcade.
Santi is no ordinary vampire. He may hate the daylight and have a sharp pair of canine teeth, but treatments allow him to keep his more sinister urges at bay.
Still, prolonged exposure to sunlight has caused Santi’s body to deteriorate, so he and his mother pack up and head north for Lapland, and a quiet countryside town.
For all the raving of Santi’s doctor, Lapland fits more in line with Bernie Taupin’s description of Mars: it “ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids; in fact it’s cold as hell.”
And here is where Shiver could have fallen into clichés as numerous as the bear traps that litter the dark woods of the town.
Fortunately, director Isidro Ortiz knows how to craft a scene.
While the current batch of American horror flicks rely heavily upon gore and serve no other purpose than to push the boundaries of an R rating, Shiver is a different breed of animal, pun not quite intended.
Its construction of suspense is akin to Jaws, not revealing its monster until the right moment. It does have some gory moments, but they’re used effectively here.
In short, townspeople start turning up dead, eaten, mangled, etc.
Of course, all eyes turn to the new kid, who just so happens to be a vampire. His alibis don’t matter. He was there, he fits the profile, he must have done it.
In an age where even folk singers are placed on terrorist watch lists, scenes like this cut extremely close to reality.
The more Santi and his friends discover more about residents of their new home, both past and present, the less quiet the town seems. You’ve got escaped mental patients, murder, and cover-ups. Not exactly stuff to put on the travel brochure.
When all the pieces come together, it’s effectively disturbing. Directors like Ortiz and Guillermo del Toro always hide an undercurrent of how extreme revenge is inflicted upon those who prey on the innocent.
Though the ending feels somewhat contrived, Shiver makes up for its lack of originality with fantastic use of editing, music, and, above all, tone.
So this Halloween weekend, don’t plop down $10 on a pointless gore-fest like the latest Saw entry. Instead, stay home, turn off the lights, and prepare to be spooked en español.
Shiver releases on DVD Tuesday, Oct. 28.
In addition to being a huge movie fan, Kip Mooney is a Senior Staff Writer for UNT's North Texas Daily
