Ambush Bug here with news about a special discount for those in and around Manhattan who would like to check out HARD LABOR, an unconventional horror tale from Brazil, this week at Cinema Village, located at 22 East 12th St. in Manhattan. My review for the film is below, and if the review intrigues, you can check out the film at a special discounted rate until the film completes its run at the theater this Thursday, November 6th.Official synopsis: Although emotionally in sync, Helena (Helena Albergaria) and her white-collar husband Otavio (Marat Descartes), suddenly find themselves at opposite ends of the labor force: just as she gets ready to open a grocery store (and become a business owner), he is fired from a “stable” job. As Otávio goes through a series of humiliating and ego-crushing job interviews (and is forced to re-invent himself for a new job market), Helena jumpstarts her grocery store in a mysterious (and progressively deteriorating) building. Soon enough, her enthusiasm for a better future begins to give way to a dark, pervasive doom – and Otávio’s self-upgrading morphs into an eerie transformation.
The film is running today, tomorrow, and Thursday at 1:05p 3:05p 5:05p 7:05p 9:05p and if you give the box office the password “Ambush Bug” you’ll get a ticket at a discounted rate!
Support independent horror and check out my review of HARD LABOR below!
Playing this week at Cinema Village, located at 22 East 12th Street in Manhattan, NY from Dexenove!HARD LABOR (TRABALHAR CANSA, 2011)
Directed by Marco Dutra, Juliana RojasWritten by Marco Dutra, Juliana Rojas
Starring Helena Albergaria, Marat Descartes, Naloana Lima, Gilda Nomacce, Marina Flores, Lilian Blanc, Hugo Villavicenzio, Thiago Carreira
Find out more about this film on Facebook here
Reviewed by Ambush Bug
Sometimes horror doesn’t come in the form of a giant monster or a slasher with an axe. Sometimes it comes in the form of real life horrors. I know many people seek out horror films as an escape from real world horrors, but every time I talk with horror writers, directors, filmmakers, comic book creators, and the like, all of them say that the real fear comes from paying bills, doing taxes, protecting one’s family, and just trying to survive through life’s turmoil. Those who prefer the fantastic, may not get a lot from HARD LABOR, but those who can acknowledge the many forms horror can take might find this Brazilian film a little too horrifying to take.
Helena (Helena Albergaria) is a housewife who dreams of opening her own business, a grocery store. But just as she finds the perfect spot for her dream to come true, her husband Otavio (Marat Descartes) loses his job. Coping with the demasculating feeling of not being the breadwinner anymore to the family, Otavio descends into depression and falls further as he continues to fail at getting a new job. In the meantime, Helena’s stress increases as the stressors of owning her own business begin to mount. Some of these stressors are banal; employees stealing food, bad weather, low sales, but others seem to be supernatural in nature, like a leaking floor, mysterious disturbances at night in the store, and is something buried in the wall? The stress levels for both Helena and Otavio rise to a boiling point.To call HARD LABOR a slow burn is an understatement. The film is about the feeling it conveys more than a series of jump scares and loud clangs. There’s a slow boiling tension that begins from frame one and never really lets up as the story goes on. Through some very personal failures by the two leads really pull you in and as they hurt financially and economically, so did I as the viewer. The film really does a fantastic job of painting real life tensions in a cinematic, yet realistic manner.
At the same time, there’s an underlying supernatural slant that capably gets under your skin. There is a monster of sorts here and definitely something eerie going on, but that’s not the highlight here. Directors Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas do a fantastic job of bringing on the creep in the right places. Just when the real world problems get a little too heavy, strange sounds and dark shadows begin moving at the grocery. All the way to the end, this balancing act between the real world and supernatural is walked very capably.I’d consider this an arthouse horror film rather than anything else. The real world horrors by far outweigh the paranormal. While both parts are represented, it’s the surmounting pressure that ultimately provides the terror here which comes in more of a general sense of unease rather than shocks and chills. Even the ending, which reminded me a lot of the unconventional ways Kubrick ended his films, with Helena and Otavio reaching some kind of conclusion that doesn’t quite answer all of the questions, but definitely makes them much different people than they were at the beginning of the film. And just as there are no easy answers to real life problems, this film has no easy resolution either. So if you’re in the mood for unconventional horror, the kind of horror that strays from the norm while still hitting close to home, HARD LABOR might just be the type of real world horror film for you.
Ambush Bug is Mark L. Miller, original @$$Hole/wordslinger/writer of wrongs/reviewer/interviewer/editor of AICN COMICS for over 13 years & AICN HORROR for 4. Follow Ambush Bug on the Twitters @Mark_L_Miller.
Look for our bi-weekly rambling about random horror films on Poptards and Ain’t It Cool on AICN HORROR’s CANNIBAL HORRORCAST Podcast every other Thursday!
