KM 31

Rudely dunking J-horror tropes into Mexican mythology, this stunningly derivative Latin ghost chiller might have had audiences Jackson Pollocking their underwear 10 years ago. Now (unless you’ve spent the past decade down a well), only the sheer poverty of ideas is terrifying. As Iliana Fox investigates a haunted highway that left her twin sister minus both her legs and lost in a coma, the scares stack up like faded Xeroxes. Nightmare visions, smash-cut jumps, creepy kids, ghosts with black hair, spectral whispers, blood in the sink, a vengeful legend from the past… Still, writer/director Rigoberto Castañeda apes Nakata, Shimizu and co with slickster confidence and if it carries no cross-cultural wallop, DoP Alejandro Martínez’s Mexico shadowland – dank sewers, claustrophobic interiors and netherworld forests – at least feels new.