Atrocious

Atrocious (Atroz, 2018) is a Mexican shock-horror film for hardened viewers, available to watch online on iFILM. Police arrest two men after a woman is run down, search their car, and find a video camera. What's on the tapes is something nobody was meant to see.

From there the movie plays out as an examination of those confiscated recordings. A captain and his officers try to work out who the pair are and how many victims they left behind — and then decide to dispense justice on their own terms. Director Lex Ortega, who also appears on screen, shoots in found-footage style: grainy images, a shaky handheld camera, almost no score. That raw, documentary feel is the whole engine of the dread.

Be warned up front: this sits at the extreme, transgressive end of horror, in the lineage of A Serbian Film, with unflinching brutality and no comfort at the end. The squeamish should skip it entirely. Viewers hunting down the most extreme Mexican cinema, though, will get exactly what they came for. Stream Atrocious (2018) online on iFILM.