KM31 (Kilometro 31)

How’s this for an opening gambit… A voice in the darkness announces that “Everything I loved was over and then… life itself.” A beautiful woman (Adria Collado) is travelling on a gloomy back road. Her car screeches to a halt when she realises she may have hit a child. If only she had watched Crash or Death Proof, she might have known the entire scene was a set up. A twinge of twin telepathy alerts her sister (who lives nearby) to the danger. A mad dash to the ER room ends with the dread words “we have to amputate” and “coma”.
In the genuinely creepy aftermath, psychological scars dating back to the twins’ childhood are slowly unpicked. But there’s something else going on, something less tangible. An old crone in the mountains speaks of ghostly victims from colonial times and the terrible legend of La Llorona. Nightmarish visions of suicide and severance flicker across the screen in the fast cuts that blight all horror movies nowadays. Supporting characters start to disappear. A detective attempts to investigate to no avail. The only hope for all concerned is the special psychic bond between the girls.
Holy moo-cow. KM31 has everything. No wonder this galloping hokum is already the third biggest grossing title of all time in its native Mexico. A strange hybrid of supernatural thriller and magic realist soap opera, the heroic pace makes the raucous Planet Terror seem Godot-like by comparison. In a film pulsating with unlikely turns and shocking revelations, our favourite bit is still the opening credit that says ‘Based On True Events’. Hmm. ‘True’ must mean something entirely different down Mexico way.