‘Angel Negro’: Examining Self-Censorship in Chile’s First Horror Film
There’s one thing I came to notice quickly when I ventured into Chilean horror cinema: don’t take their films lightly. The habit of entering a horror film without any prior knowledge or simply through a recommendation is my preferred choice. Only I stopped doing that with Chilean horror films after a few picks. Two of which I knew were extreme films, Trauma and Hidden in the Wood, but even then they side-swiped me with intense and graphic depictions.
The other, Aftershock, I had no idea what to expect except that it was written by and starred Eli Roth. That exploitation film threw me into the ringer. Even their regular horror films come with a decent amount of disturbing storytelling such as The Wolf House and disgusting body horror moments like in Wrong Trail. But still, Chilean horror films are ones I tend to visit more often, with caution now, due to their filmography that pushes the boundaries within media.
Yet, the majority of the films mentioned above are recent additions to the horror genre. It’s interesting to see just how graphic plenty of Chilean horror films have gotten compared to how minimal Chile’s first horror film, Angel Negro, depicts violence on screen. Horror director Jorge Olguín, who’s contributed to the genre with five other films to the genre and counting, is credited as the pioneer of Chilean horror films with his 2000 directorial debut.
Angel Negro follows Gabriel (Álvaro Morales) as he begins to suspect a murderer is targeting him and his old high school friends who were a part of the death of an introverted and shy student named Angel. He contacts Carolina (Andrea Freund), another participant in Angel’s incident, and they both attempt to unravel the mystery of who could be the killer.
Angel Negro is a good starting point for Chile to enter the horror genre. It doesn’t go straight for a gut-punch narrative filled with disturbing imagery. Instead, it plays it safe by familiarizing the genre to the country. It hits the right and predictable spots of a murder mystery and brings stylish directing with a huge giallo influence. If you have seen Olguín’s other film La Casa, you may have noticed the director has a soft spot for the found footage filmmaking technique. This love for the style can even be seen with Angel Negro. While the majority of Angel Negro is filmed from the typical third-person POV, Olguín uses the found footage style to place the viewers in the midst of chaos and confusion when starting off his film.
Unfortunately, the film does lack horror sequences. In between the few slasher scenes involving the masked assassin, the film focuses primarily on the mystery of the killer. Angel Negro takes a step back from horror elements. Instead, it enters the typical tropes of police procedures and murder mysteries. While the film is missing the shocking and brutal deaths that made giallo famous worldwide, it still managed to grab the attention of Lloyd Kaufman’s company Troma Entertainment which now distributes physical copies of Angel Negro.
While I do believe the absence of violence in the film is primarily due to budget limitations, there’s another huge factor to consider. The self-censorship happening within Chilean media must have affected Olguín. Back in 2001, when Angel Negro was filmed, Chilean media was a lot more constrained even though dictator Pinochet’s reign was overthrown in the early 90s with the No campaign.
The No campaign was run by a coalition that brought a new perspective to the future of Chile using happy commercials and a jingle during a time of “gray and suffocation”. The film No, directed by Pablo Larrarín, dramatizes this event and highlights it to international viewers. After the elections, the transition period from police control to public freedom was called the Chilean transition to democracy.
This era however was still an open wound for Chile and its creatives. Sensitive topics were met with internalized censorship. Certain film censorships that lingered from the military dictatorship weren’t even abolished until 2002. In the book Media, Memory, And Human Rights in Chile author Kristen Sorensen mentions after the death of Pinochet in 2006 new and more lenient conditions arose. Yet there is still, “a series of constraints, both political and financial ones, which encourage self-censorship.” Keep in mind the tyrant’s death occurred five years after the release of Angel Negro.
Another factor that contributed to Olguín’s internalized censorship is how fresh the wounds of the fascist regime were. Just like Pinochet, who never met justice, many workers under DINA (National Intelligence Directorate) walked the streets of Chile without meeting any repercussions for their sins. This is exactly what La Casa depicts. The film follows police officer Arriagada (Gabriel Cañas) as he responds to an urgent call about a disruption at a house. Upon investigating, he becomes trapped inside and is forced to face the literal and figurative demons of his past from when he worked under the dictatorship. Its presentation of the atrocities man can transpire under an evil empire are brutal and in your face.
It’s evident Olguín is willing to use the horror genre to get political and push boundaries like modern Chilean horror films. While Chile is still healing, the option for filmmakers to stop self-censoring themselves is open. And now it’s time for Latin American horror films to do what they do best: revisit, bring attention to, and critique their history through the genre.
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