The screenplay for American Carnage, written by brothers Diego and Julio Hallivis (and directed by the former), begins with a genuinely provocative, timely and frightening idea: in the not-so-distant future, the far-right governor of a Southern state in the U.S. has issued an executive order for all the children of immigrants to be rounded up as part of an ongoing operation to “punish” those who committed the relatively minor civil infraction of crossing our border to the south for whatever reason might have brought them here. It is a completely insane order, of course, based entirely upon a growing intolerance of those who might not have been born within the United States, but after four years of a presidency in which such practices led to the separation of children from their families, it also looks sadly familiar.
If the movie begins with this idea, however, the filmmakers follow through on it with far less provocative ones, before going down an entirely different path altogether in the movie’s finale. In the interest of keeping things a surprise, even about a movie with such diminishing returns as this, none of the details of what is truly happening behind the curtain during this plot will be revealed. Let us just say that what begins as another example of socio-politically flavored horror moves toward a more generic kind of horror by the time we reach the climax, in which a group of characters must escape a terrifying situation and a claustrophobic location.
Naturally, the characters we follow are a group of youths who have been relocated from a detention center to a home for the elderly and ailing. Even more naturally, these teenagers don’t know each other, giving the Hallivises plenty of opportunities to frame everything we need to know about these kids as exposition delivered through dialogue. The main character of what becomes an ensemble is JP (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.), a worker at a fast-food restaurant with not too many other prospects lined up. His sister Lily (Yumarie Morales) has just been accepted into university, which gives him conflicting emotions of happiness for her and disappointment about his own lot in life.
The others who eventually join JP at the care facility are Camila (Jenna Ortega, continuing her breakout year by probably giving the best performance of the group), Big Mac (Allen Maldonado), Chris (Jorge Diaz), and Micah (Bella Ortiz). Their respective characteristics are Camila’s tough-mindedness, Big Mac’s playboy nonchalance, Chris’ neurotic paranoia and Micah’s mostly nondescript activism. That is about all that we learn about these characters, not including a major twist that rewrites what we learned about one of them. Anyway, something strange is afoot within the way the facility is treating the elderly patients in its care – from the suspicious attitude of its manager (Eric Dane) to the way, at one point, a seemingly dead patient twists into an unsettling, crablike posture and begins to scuttle toward Big Mac, eyes agog and jaw unhinged.
Yes, this is also another movie in which the subtle pleasures of witnessing the build-up toward the solution to a mystery are betrayed by the movie’s apparent desire, instead, to ratchet up the spectacle. It’s all just an engine for some nighttime chases through the darkened halls of the facility, a few “shocking” revelations about the true nature of the mission behind everything, and the final twist of the knife in the form of What’s Really Going On. American Carnage, as a title, fits the movie perfectly – evocative of a whole lot of nothing in particular.
Photo courtesy of Saban Films
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