The Chilean Jorge Riquelme Serrano won the prize for the best new director at the festival in San Sebastian for this ultimately rather harrowing and atmospheric combination of thriller and drama. “Algunas bestias” or “Some Beasts” in the end turned into an unexpectedly disturbing and shocking drama that, I must admit, I did not expect, and it is one of those films with an extremely slow, slow pace that leads to a climax in the finale. From the beginning, there is a kind of ominous and restless atmosphere and the dynamics of the relationship between the members of the family that will be stuck on an island in the extreme south of Chile is, to put it mildly, strange. The obvious role model for this Chilean filmmaker is the famous Austrian Michael Haneke, so he builds the whole story in his style and tone.
Very soon we will understand the reason why three generations of this family went to the small island where they have a summer house. Alejandro (Gaston Salgado) and Ana (Millaray Lobos) try to extort money from her parents to turn the old property into a luxury resort. Dolores (Paulina Garcia) and Antonio (Alfredo Castro) are obviously members of some social elite, arrogant, high-class rich people who will scornfully reject their daughter’s and son-in-law’s proposal to transfer land that means nothing to them. And since then it is clear to us that this is not any family vacation and gathering of close people, but they are all gathered there with an agenda, and Dolores and Antonio do not hide that they cannot stand the woman’s husband, who is called black or an imbecile because of his lower-class origin.
With them on the island are their children, i.e. grandchildren Maximo and Consuelo, whose relationship is closest to that of a brother and sister, and the property is looked after by a local named Nicolas, who the family will first accuse of groping Consuelo, and then will be sexually assaulted by a drunken Dolores. The next morning, Nicolas will disappear, and three generations of this family will be left alone on the island without electricity, water or food, doomed to each other. From the very beginning, the author warned us that we are dealing with people with abusive tendencies, patients who somehow manage to hide their true face, but very soon they will start to turn on each other.
The result is a rather brutal, shocking, disturbing, completely unexpected and extremely uncomfortable film. From scene to scene, the tensions increase and the masks slowly fall, and this uneasy atmosphere is additionally affected by the slow pace, often long frames. What will happen in the end is really disgusting and disgusting, and at the end of Riquelme Serrano, he recorded a brutal criticism of the bourgeoisie of his country, and the elite that apparently emerged after the dictatorship came to power. Those sick sadists who feed on the nastiness, exploitation and suffering of others, even if those others are members of their family.