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Paradise Lost - aka “Turistas“ (2006)

Dir: John Stockwell

While on vacation in Brazil a group of tourists get stranded when their bus crashes.

Americans Alex (Josh Duhamel, “Transformers”), his sister Bea (Olivia Wilde, TV’s “House M.D”) and their friend Amy (Beau Garrett), along with Australian Pru Stagler (Melissa George, “30 Days of Night”) and Brits Finn Davies (Desmond Askew) and Liam Kuller (Max Brown) follow a track through the woods where they have been told lies a beach bar.

Upon arriving at the sandy paradise the group decides to stay on the beach drinking beer and dancing with the locals, the friendliest of which seems to be a Brazilian teenager Kiko (Agles Steib).
Unbeknownst to them all though their drinks have been drugged and when they wake next morning they discover they have been robbed of all their belongings.

They walk to a small village trying to find a police station, but get into more trouble with the locals just as Kiko appears and says he will who lead them to his uncle's isolated but well-equipped cabin in the jungle to wait for the next bus due two days later.
But all is not as it seems…..

 

Director John Stockwell had previously played around with beautiful people in beautiful places when he made the glossy but actually quite good fun “Into the Blue” in 2005.
He shows he still has an eye for such things though with “Paradise Lost” as we have lots of scenes of good looking women in teeny bikinis (and the odd guy, though not in bikinis, teeny or otherwise) playing on golden sands, splashing around deep blue seas and swimming though amazing looking underwater tunnels.
Lets say right now, this is a film that looks good.

But thankfully it’s not all beauty though as some welcome ugliness appears in the form of much nasty violence, surgical gore, sweaty guys with big guns and a nutzoid Doctor.
As with many Horror films in the 00’s “Paradise Lost” (especially in it’s proper ‘unrated’ form) delivers some full on gore and grue done with a high budget to make everything look impressive but with enough grime still caked to it to give the FX work and the death scenes a welcome exploitative edge not seen since the glory days of the 70’s/early 80’s.

It may not be as in your face and extreme as some other films of this period (in fact a couple deaths are rather too matter of fact) but Stockwell pretty much delivers what the plot the set-up promised and luckily we also have some actually interesting (and amazingly not that annoying) characters to follow on this journey through Brazilian madness.

Josh Duhamel makes a good heroic lead and comes off as likeable as he is in the “Transformers” flicks, Olivia Wilde is actually bearable here as she does not spend the entire film going around morose and angst-ridden as she does as ‘13’ in “House M.D”, Melissa George makes a good impression in the second lead slot and although not a heroine role as far as taking action goes the fact she is the only one that speaks Portuguese means her character becomes an important part of the group.
My favourite character though is Askew’s Finn, as he’s wonderfully English in that cutting right to the chase, no bullshit, way and has some nicely funny dialogue.

The villains of the piece are petty nondescript, even head nutter Zamora (Miguel Lunardi) is not exactly memorable. But at least the unusual setting and cultural aspect of the characters adds something extra.
Zamora does have a painful ‘explanation’ sequence though (saved by the macabre activities he’s doing - scalpel city baby- while pontificating) as the writer Michael Ross decides to take a few 'liberal' self-hate swipes at Americans and ‘gringo’ tourists in general with a slice of dialogue that almost moves into anti-white racism.
Hey, Zamora mate, we give you our tourist cash and we buy your crappy nuts to eat at Christmas…give it a rest!
Thankfully though he is later shown up as the hypocrite he is when he calls one of his men a “dumb Indian” and reminds the guy he owns him! So much for solidarity with your countrymen there then!

Action is nothing special in general with pretty much your standard cat and mouse stuff thrown in in-between the quite graphic bloodshed, but Stockwell ensures such scenes are often lifted above the norm by the use of the stunning locations.
A genuinely panic-filled chase from one of the killers is made extremely memorable due to the fact the chase happens entirely underwater, through tunnels and along sunken mountainsides, with everyone, even the bad guy, having to swim just as desperately to grab air (even, in a great moment, from little floating air bubbles caught underneath a submerged rocky overhang) as they have to swim to avoid being caught!

The bus crash at the start of the film is also well done and you have to laugh at the matter of fact way the locals take such an event.
But when you live in a country where even the caterpillars can kill you, who cares when your bus goes rolling down a mountain.

Violence is occasional but very effective with some good old wince-inducing moments (best use of a staple gun since I found those discarded pages from a porn mag in the woods when I was 14 and most satisfying use of a skewer since the invention of chicken satay) and the pretty infamous operating sequence is delightfully graphic if not actually violent.
Nudity is kept to a short topless scene from Beau Garrett and a Brazilian babe striptease that afterwards sees Finn amusingly discover his charm is not payment enough for such a fine T&A showcase.

The ending is perhaps a bit low key but at least we have no stupid, nonsensical, last second twist to ruin the film, and perhaps a bit less time could have been spent frolicking in the water and more time spilling vital organs, but overall “Paradise Lost” is a well made, enjoyable, satisfying little excursion to nastyville that shows again how delightfully far even mainstream 00’s horror went (though there are films that go further for sure) as far as well crafted in your face violence goes.