Safe Return Doubtful

Mexico 2023

Though set in Mexico City, this is in effect a Chilean film, with its main stars, Sebastián Silva and the brilliant Carolina Saavedra, hailing from there. Silva also directs and wrote the script.

The premise may not seem immediately appealing.. an artist with a mental block, without success for a long time and habitually taking ketamine, takes a break at a nudist beach where he meets Jordan Firstman, who plays a version of himself, as a media influencer.

The first half hour isn’t an easy or necessarily enjoyable watch. It could be easily binned. But don’t. The irreverent becomes the surprising with a twist that most won’t see coming.

The film is a sharp critique, or piss-take, of social media dependence, the world of influencers, and most notably, class distinctions. It also gives a slating to the movie industry itself.

The unconventional approach soon wins over, Silva avoids a formulaic approach and provides a unique experience. Genre wise, it sits between horror, crime, mystery, thriller and humour, vaguely a sort of queer take on the Korean movie Parasite (2019), but there’s far more to it than that. Its few moments of very dark humour, particularly from Carolina Saavedra, are when it is at its strongest.

Refreshingly nonconformist.

IMDb score 6.9 / 10 – My score 8 / 10