Ìý The cryptic title of Mexican horror movie KM31 stands for "31 Kilometres". It's the point on a highway just outside Mexico City that's troubled by supernatural incidents. The latest involves Agata (Iliana Fox), who crashes her car after a naked child runs onto the road. The accident leaves Agata in a coma and leads twin sister Catalina (Fox again) to investigate. Despite borrowing heavily from the spectral chills of Japanese horror, writer/director Rigoberto Castañeda delivers a ghost story with a Latin flava.
According to the opening credits, KM31 is "based on real events". That may or may not be true, but the movie definitely owes something to the legend of La Llorana (The Weeping Woman). As Catalina, boyfriend Omar (Raúl Méndez) and Agata's friend Nuño (Adrià Collado) piece together the highway's strange power, they meet an old crone (Luisa Huertas) in a nearby pueblo. She tells them an ancient, long-forgotten story about a native Indian girl who killed herself and her children after being duped by a Spanish nobleman during the conquest of Mexico. Could this be the key to the mystery?
"SKILLED GRASP OF ATMOSPHERE"
KM31's frights are familiar from a dozen Asian horror movies: voices emanate from sewer systems, supernatural presences are glimpsed in rear-view mirrors and an austere ghost girl with long black hair and a thirst for vengeance stalks the heroes. It's all too familiar for its own good, and isn't helped by the screenplay's meandering subplots about the twin sisters' past and their loves in the present. Fortunately, Castañeda rallies for the final third, set in Mexico City's sewers. Like the rest of KM31's intermittent bursts of creeping dread, it just about works thanks to his skilled grasp of atmosphere. Dank hospitals, foggy forests and subterranean tunnels, there's no Sol here; this is Mexico like you've never seen it before.
KM31 is out in the UK on 7th December 2007.
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