Descendents (2008)

South American cinema at its most powerful. Jose Olguin, director of the fascinating film, Eternal Blood, has left a deep mark upon Chilean cinema and it is clear why his impact has been so profound with this masterpiece. This motion picture certainly is an attempt to reconcile Chile's history of military dictatorships and violation of human rights with the enlightened nation it has become. Beautifully filmed with stylistic cinematic flourish, the imagery is hauntingly stark and surrealistic in intent. Some of what is depicted involving the innocents is shocking but justifiable in light of the artistic purposes of the director. The film is unrated or NC- 17 because of the violence directed at children but these sequences are clearly misinterpreted in their true meaning as metaphor. In the end, Olquin refers stunningly to Magic Realism and the film's conclusion is overwhelmingly mesmerizing. A true treasure of Chile's cinematic legacy.

I had the pleasure to watch this 'gem' of horror genre in cinema.The story is about a little girl who gets separated from her mother during a zombie virus outbreak and now has to live on her own, wandering through abandoned, dead villages or suburbs to search for food. Killer-Commandos were sent out to clean up the place, so not to be mistaken for a zombie is high priority on her list.Because she is immune to the zombie virus, not a single zombie is a threat for this girl. Eventually she finds other kids who are also immune and they group up to find salvation at the ocean - or something.Sounds awesome? It gets better: Not only the plot is completely destroyed by the main 'characters' being immune to zombies, the visuals are so extremely bad, irritating and unnecessary that you want to break the DVD in half and burn it after wards.Expect long, pointless slow motion, blurred and shaky scenes even when nothing happens AT ALL. Watching 5 minutes of playing children with an overload of shitty effects and slow motion. GENIUS!When the little girl remembers her mother, flashback scenes are used. Not one, but you'll see many of them. However, they are all equally annoying and mostly meaningless.There was hardly any acting or dialog.Sound effects do their part to slingshot this horror movie right into the dumpster.This is no trashy-bad zombie movie but simply a VERY bad zombie movie.1/10

Nothing... absolutely NOTHING excuses the big plot holes this story has. I had the opportunity to watch this movie on the first public exhibition made in Chile, and although the previous movies of director Olguin weren't good, i had faith in him becoming mature enough to make a convincing and sustainable movie, but i was both disappointed and sad to find myself laughing instead of being scared, and to watch more than the half of the public leaving the place before the half of the film. Believe me. People just stood up from their sits and left the hell out of there in anger. The film has a certain touch of social criticism, but it is so week and so covered up on awful special effects, digital visual filters and ineffective horror sequences that the importance of the messages becomes obsolete.Lots of questions stay unexplained, and the fact that the child-protagonists aren't attacked by the zombies (because they are immune to them), there isn't actually any tension in the movie. The central musical theme repeats itself along the movie, as also does and scene which is repeated at least five times with no apparent sense. Boring and ridiculous as hell. But you don't know ridiculous until you watch the ending.

Beyond Geroge Romero there has not been a zombie film that's loaded with this much social/political commentary. Jorge Olguin's 2002 follow-up to SANGRE ETERNA aka ETERNAL BLOOD is a very strong and original post-apocalyptic/Sci-fi/horror movie. For about a half a million dollars, the movie was shot in ten days, with mostly young children ranging from five to ten years old. The children's acting may not be up to par and some of the effects surely reflect the lack of budget & time but DESCENDENTS/SOLOS is a truly dark and disturbing movie set in a dystopian world that looks like a low budget mixture of 28 DAYS LATER and CHILDREN OF MEN, with strong echoes to Chile's past as a military dictatorship. Jorge Olguin is a talent to definitely keep an eye on.