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A family moves
to a new house to get a fresh start, but
they soon realize that something's not right in this
house. They decide to play with a ouija board to find
out more about the spirits in the house, ignoring the
advice given by the woman who gave it to them that they
shouldn't play with the ouija board after 6pm. Bad idea,
now they've released the angry spirits of the house and
it seems as if there's no stopping them.
Remember the good old 80s when we had classy haunted
house movies like "Amityville Horror" and "Poltergeist"?
Of course you do, but do you also remember that Mexico
used to make low-budget rip-off's of most American
horror flicks that were both cheesy and abysmal? If not,
Cañitas will surely refresh your memory.
After the success of Kilometro 31, it was no surprise
that Cañitas also managed to lure a good amount of
teens, looking for a Mexican horror flick, into the
cinemas. Unfortunately, Cañitas probably disappointed
about 99,9% of the audience. This terrible, low-budget
haunted house movie felt like it was made in the mid
80's or so - and as I said before, Mexican horror flicks
in the mid 80's weren't exactly good, nor very
technically competent. In fact, they looked like those
early 70's low-budget drive-in movies when it came to
the technical stuff. So is Cañitas the Mexican take on
Grindhouse? Sadly, no, not at all, it's just extremely
incompetently executed.
We have a nonsense storyline which we've seen hundreds
of times before, and I actually think they were trying
to be modern and make a The Grudge like film, but since
everything else around it was so far away from modern
as possible, it felt more like a mixture between The
Exorcist and Amityville Horror. Heck, we even have a
priest going into the house, trying to rid the house
of evil spirits by reading from the bible. Then
there's the acting which is sub-par at best while the
dialogues are flat-out ridiculous.
But back to the poor look of the film, sorry if I'm
hung-up on this but I've seen homemade amateur films
with better standards than this. I don't even know if
the poor equipment was the worst thing though since
the camerawork is so excruciatingly bad. Seriously,
the picture goes out of focus every now and then and
becomes all blurry, there are way too many odd, sudden
camera-moves and close-ups, and it seems as if they
couldn't afford a tripod as the camera is constantly
shaking. I guess they were going for that Dogma feel,
but it just didn't work, it just looked sloppy.
Ultimately, Cañitas is an absolute mess. It's a cliché-
filled horror flick that belongs in the 80s. I'm really
anxious to see what the picture on the DVD release will
look like, quality-wise, since the source material seems
to have been so poor. Mexico isn't exactly well-known
for their high standards in film production, but come
on, my school project documentary looked better than this!
A bloody dead body, that's it.
Piano music, outdated flute music and humming noise,
a train wreck in other words. Plus we have a whole bunch
of cliché sound effects like crow-sounds at a cemetery,
child-laughing coming from within the house (even though
there's not really a child ghost to be seen) and various
other ridiculous sound effects.
Cañitas should have been killed at kilometro 31 in my
opinion. This Mexican horror flick set them back miles
after the brilliant masterpiece called "Pan's Labyrinth".
Seriously, anyone with a camcorder can do better than
this, I'm sure, as long as they're not from Mexico
apparently. I don't mean to be harsh but, well I do,
this movie deserves no credit what-so-ever, what a
piece of rubbish this was!
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