No Spoilers
I discovered this international horror movie, Portuguese I think, while going over the listings for horror movies on Amazon Prime. Over the last year or two I have branched out watching more international horror movies and I have found some true gems. Korean and Japanese horror are definitely some standout countries/societies to bring horror entertainment to the big/medium/stream screen but branching out in this way was definitely the right way to grow and sustain my interest in the horror genre as I now have so much more to watch and discover.
I had to watch this movie through sub-titles because my Portuguese has never been quite up to snuff, and in the case of The Grotto I quickly learned/deciphered I am more likely than not losing much of the intended meaning through the old ‘lost in translation’ paradigm. I can tell that through the American translation we’re probably missing a lot of colloquialisms and possibly other local customary terms and phrases and regional verbal shortcuts. There’s a few scenes where the American translation is probably pretty close but not close enough to what’s being said that some of the scenes seem almost comical, or lose the proper frame of mind of how we’re suppose to feel about what’s going on in a scene, and though this is my own conjecture, I’ll bet it’s not far from the truth. And then there are other translations that come out as so shockingly retarded in the translation you know that in no way was the actual correct translation, like no fuckin way. This leads me to believe the native language this was written in probably conveyed a better movie to those who it was intended to watch, namely the ethnic group, because I’m not sure if the native language is in fact Portuguese. To me this added appeal as I tried to imagine what was really being said. But still made this a very watchable show. A really really good B movie.
<…of to watch the last half of Il Gruta, The Grotto…>
With that said though, The Grotto has pulled me in and I have enjoyed everything I have seen so far (I’ve watched about half the movie up to this point.) I think this movie may have pulled some of it’s cues from ‘The Descent‘ or maybe vice versa as I don’t know release dates but that’s just a guess.
There’s some great filmography and one of the main actors (actresses?) in her nun habit makes her look like the quintessential nun and if you saw here walking down the street there’s no way you’d think she’s an actor, but I think that might be true of any woman who dawns a nun’s habit lol.
All in all even in the weird translation this was definitely an enjoyable watch, great tension building moments, 5 friends, deep in a cavernous and sometimes not so cavernous cave… I know I know, you think you’ve seen it all before but trust me, you haven’t seen it done quite like this. Or maybe you have.
I might do a little research and see if others concur with me on the translation thing but other than that, check A Gruta out when there’s nothing else to watch. Some moments really shine in this one.
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