Downhill (2016)
Gareth Jones
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Starring Natalie Burn, Ignacia Allamand, Ariel Levy, Bryce Draper, Luke Massy
Directed by Patricio Valladares
Screened at FrightFest 2016
Following up on his odious, horribly plotted disaster Hidden in the Woods, Chilean director Patricio Valladares returns to the genre with Downhill – a not-quite-as-odious but still horribly plotted disaster.
Couple Joe (Draper) and Stephanie (Burn) are downhill bike racing enthusiasts. Still reeling from the accidental death of one of their friends during a race, Joe and Stephanie are invited by old friend Pablo (Levy) to take part in a corporate-sponsored race in Chile that could make for a solid payday.
Accepting, the pair hop on a plane and head over, partying with Pablo before taking off the next morning for a practice run through the nearby forest. It’s all – *sigh* – downhill from here, though, when they discover an injured, and sick, man behind the wheel of a crashed vehicle. Desperate to find help for the wounded man, Joe and Stephanie draw the ire of a group of local hunters led by a ruthless brute ‘alpha’ (Massy) – all of whom appear determined to protect the secret behind whatever it is that’s wrong with the man involved in the crash.
Valladares’ Downhill has a pretty good setup: isolated location, fish-out-of-water protagonists, threatening adversaries of unknown motivation and some kind of freaky infection – but as the film progresses, it very much matches its namesake when it comes to quality. Once again, Valladares just can’t seem to help himself when it comes to his portrayal of women – whose only purpose appears to be running, screaming, shouting, stripping and dying. Every time it seems that Burn’s Stephanie is about to go ‘Ripley’ and demonstrate sufficient independent strength, she caves or folds time and time again… the switch serving no real character purpose – it’s merely to drive her from one point of conflict to the next. If things need to move, she gets strong for a moment; if Valladares wants the abuse to persist, she flops like a fish. It’s all over the bloody place and, ultimately, insulting to anyone of reasonable intelligence.
The villains are one-note but passable – which actually works given their shady nature – but Valladares has a tendency to wreck almost every encounter with them by overloading the scene with terrible CGI gunshots/bullets and the belief that shaking the damned camera every time someone pulls a trigger makes for a more impactful sequence. It does not.
Still, there’s a compelling mystery at the core of Downhill – possibly the only thing that will keep the devoted genre fan watching beyond the first 30 minutes – and the makeup effects used to demonstrate the mutations caused by whatever infection is ravaging these woods are superb. There’s also some creature action – the infection evolving into tentacles bursting from chests and other monstrous fun.
But even this is unfocused, unfulfilled and poorly handled. Some obscure answers are offered as the relatively poor ending comes around, but many are kept locked away – for example, what are the bags hanging in the woods for? What is the purpose behind all of the villains’ activity? Why is there only one single incident of apparently supernatural/mystical behaviour in between all the grounded body horror?
Realistically, these are questions that you’re likely to ask and immediately forget – because dissecting Downhill to such a degree simply isn’t worth the time nor the effort. If the filmmakers had felt differently, perhaps we’d have ended up with a more satisfying film but as it stands, Downhill is a dull, slapdash effort with very little in the way of redeeming qualities.
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Film
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