When it came out in 2006, Turistas generated primarily negative reviews, and the film still retains a crushing 19% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Looking back at it and its major themes now, it seems like it’s time to admit: this film, directed by John Stockwell and starring Melissa George, Josh Duhamel and Olivia Wilde, isn’t as spectacularly bad as it was painted originally. Rather, it was put down in a major way by the release of Eli Roth‘s Hostel earlier that year.
Turistas does have a story outline, pretty similar to Roth’s now-classic slasher: a group of young western travelers are having a great time in Brazil, with lots of booze and attention from attractive locals, before finding themselves in the middle of a tricky situation that soon turns into an outright nightmare. But while Stockwell’s film follows the general patterns of both slasher and the vacation horror subgenre, it also has a few curious ideas in store.
These Tourists Really Should Have Gone Home
The guys from Hostel were undone by their lust, while the characters in Turistas are brought down first, by some reckless driving, and then, well, basically also by lust. After their bus breaks down in the middle of nowhere, a small group of tourists, including brother and sister Alex and Bea (Duhamel and Wilde), Bea’s friend Amy, a Portuguese-speaking Pru (George) and two lads from the UK, Finn and Liam, decide not to wait for another transportation but head to a secret beach bar. Once there, after having some drinks and encountering some locals, they once again decide to ditch the hope for a bus, and just hang out there for the night. Turistas actually makes an interesting point of showing how its characters, who are either American, British or Australian, are so used to feeling secure to the point of omnipotent, that they stubbornly insist on continuing their journey even when the situation gets marginally worse.
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It’s unclear if having not very likable characters was a part of that point, because this both creates a problem for the film, and at the same time works for its primary idea. Having almost no sympathetic characters always presents a certain issue for connecting the audience with the story, and the heroes in Turistas just aren’t that compelling. Josh Duhamel’s Alex, who can be considered a protagonist, aged particularly poorly, since the character only seems to have one note: he constantly and loudly chastises others, mostly female characters. While he says he only came to Brazil to keep an eye on his sister, his supposed protective instincts are also way off. He might demand his sister’s friend not go swimming topless, because it makes him uncomfortable, but when it comes to big stuff, he just goes along with everyone’s terrible decisions. At the same time, Alex’s throwaway insulting remark to a bus driver, telling him to better “pick bananas or something”, is very telling in regard to the dynamic that’s happening here.
The Journey Through the Jungle Leads to Some Gory Deaths and a Villain’s Big Speech
With the exception of Pru, who actually speaks the language and is acquainted with the country’s customs and culture, the rest of the characters’ treatment of their surroundings and the local people is mostly exploitative. Bea came to Brazil seeking adventure and hoping for some aesthetic pictures, so she mindlessly takes them in bulk — including a photo of a child, which she fails to ask permission for and causes a conflict with the father. Alex is just generally dismissive, and the British guys openly admit they came here specifically to pick up women. It’s interesting how Turistas differs from Hostel in this regard. In Roth’s film, all the locals are pretty much in on the conspiracy, so they create this bubble of friendliness and sex positivity around the guys, numbing any suspicions they might have. In Stockwell’s film, since the conspiracy is more contained, the characters experience much more pushback from the locals whom they encounter.
You’d think that being yelled at, drugged and robbed would make anyone think twice about going deeper into the jungle, but it doesn’t happen. Moreover, the group actually receives several warnings, including one from a character who’s been leading them to a slaughter and had a change of heart — but they ignore those too. Their descent into hell is both represented and juxtaposed by the deceptively beautiful nature around them, and later in the film — by the actual dive into an underwater cave. The surrounding beauty, filmed with even more gusto than the graphic killings, lulls the tourists into the false sense of safety, together with the above-mentioned habit of feeling overconfident no matter what. The transactional pattern of their behavior is twisted in a dark and gory way in the third act, when the big bad explains the reasoning for his actions: he’s capturing them to harvest their organs, because “gringos” like them have been exploiting the locals in one way or another for years.
Sure, Turistas remains a flawed film, mostly due to its unsympathetic characters and some questionable creative choices, like filming most of the ending in the dark, to the point that it’s actually hard to tell what’s going on. But some choices do work, including the casting of Melissa George as one of the leads. She’d already had her major breakthrough a year prior, thanks to playing Kathy Lutz in The Amityville Horror. Here, she continues to demonstrate her impressive chops for the genre, which will lead her to roles in Triangle and A Lonely Place to Die (another underrated survival horror). It’s probably worth admitting that the whole “trip gone terribly wrong” subgenre doesn’t really offer many options for originality beyond graphic killings: for instance, Eli Roth’s own venture into the jungle in Green Inferno only fared that much better (38% on RT). Generally, with these films it’s not a matter of creativity, as much as relatability: everyone had that one vacation when things somehow went wrong. Turistas might be educational in this sense — the key is not to miss the crucial moment when it’s really going to hell.
Turistas
- Release Date
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December 1, 2006
- Runtime
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89 minutes
- Director
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John Stockwell
