By David Dent
Had your fill of films which honour the dying (pun intended) years of the 20th Century? No? Good, because here’s an Argentinian slasher which positively reeks of it.
Set against the background of the 1990 World Cup, where Argentina reached (and lost) the final against the shortly to be unified West Germany, we meet Micaela (Sol Wainer), a young woman who works in her father’s record shop. Micaela knows her music, DJing at night, dispensing knowledge to the mostly male clients, and making mixtapes to introduce punters to new music (I’m not sure if the phrase ‘Home taping is killing music’ ever got to Argentina, but it sure is appropriate; only it’s not music that’s being done in).
But in the town where she lives and works, people, both known and unknown to her, are dying in horrible ways. Her immediate friends, namely gay but closeted Tomás (Byron Barbieri) and rakish Javier (Leonel Romero) are at a loss to understand who’s behind the murders, but when Micaela picks up, via an answerphone tape, that one of the killings has her limited edition mixtape playing in the background, she’s able to whittle down the murderer to one of five people, all known to her (there’s a couple of sly cultural comments in that the tape she issued has been dubbed the ‘World Cup Killer Compilation’ and the reason that the murders have not been widely covered in the press is because of the football tournament).
The main reason to watch this rather slight slasher, which at times feels like a giallo version of the movie High Fidelity from 2000, is the almost fetishistic approach to the time in which it’s set. As well as Micaela being a walking musical encyclopaedia, she’s an obsessive cassette collector/creator; the movie’s soundtrack cleverly uses contemporary bands who evoke the hair metal sounds of the 80s and 90s, and the whole thing surrounds itself in neon and screeching guitars. FX-wise, for a low-budget film, it gets pretty nasty, but it’s let down by some patchy performances (and dubbing) and an ending which sets itself up for a sequel without resolving anything. Still, it’s good fun, and it looks and sounds fabulous.
No One Will Hear You Scream is available on VOD.
Bloody Flicks 