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Unrest

I know what you're thinking: there just aren't enough movies about angry Aztec gods turning women into hookers. And you're right. Do a Google search on it and you'll get, well, basically no results. The closest you'll get is Q: The Winged Serpent - which is really less about hookers and more about an angry, winged beast devouring New Yorkers. I don't want you to worry! Tonight's offering, Unrest, is here to (eventually) fill all of your angry god needs. And by “eventually” I mean more than 2/3 of the way through the movie… by which point you’ve probably lost interest anyway.

Our story opens on a woman alone in a run down looking hospital room. It’s unclear if she’s a patient or visitor or something else entirely. There is ominous sounding Spanish chanting. She smashes a mirror and uses a piece to slice open her face. Very dramatic. The scene cuts to black and we jump randomly into a modern looking (but strangely vacant) hospital where a young medical student is settling into her room. She’s not the same woman and this definitely isn’t the same hospital.

This hospital, while appearing mostly empty, does appear to be home to a variety of irreverent, misogynistic attendants who toss around bodies while gossiping about how sexy the dead women are. If you’re thinking their idle chatter will take them into the realm of Nekromantik, I’ll have to burst your perverted bubble here - although, had it made that leap it may have improved the story.

Soon enough, we’re following the medical student into the morgue to spend some quality time slicing and dicing a motley assortment of donated cadavers. Hooray, science! As any good horror fan knows, the scariest possibility in any morgue is that the bodies aren't actually dead. Thankfully, our med student is an agnostic who absolutely, positively doesn't believe in anything supernatural at all. Which is great, except that she spends the entire movie trying to convince people that she's seeing spirits, “feeling things” about one of her cadavers, and "just knows things.” Mmmmm, ooookay.

If you’re wondering where the hell this is going and how it connects to the opening scene, hang on. We’ll get to that in another 30 minutes or so.

When people start dying, our med student KNOWS it has something to do with the cadaver she’s been hacking apart. She begins an obsessive quest to discover where her cadaver came from. Dispassionately aiding her on the quest are her confidant - who is apparently some kind of shrink (their relationship is never explained, but considering the whacky shit coming out of the student's mouth, we must assume she's being treated by said shrink.) - and one of her fellow students - who is the only man NOT trying to fuck her, which means he’s the only one she IS trying to fuck. Strangely, no one else seems concerned about the deaths, regardless of the reason.

Through the magic of Google (as it works in the movies), the med student discovers that the corpse she's cutting up every night is that of a woman who discovered a mass grave of sacrifices to an Aztec god. Apparently the discovery "did something to her" and she became a possessed hooker who kills her customers. If you think that gods possessing smart, adventurous, Brazilian women and turning them into murderous prostitutes sounds sexy, allow me to assure you that this movie has done it's best to make it confusing and pointless instead.

Our possessed hooker must have had sex with at least one of her customers because she became pregnant and decided to sacrifice her baby to the god that is possessing her.

If you guessed that this murderous hooker is the one we saw cutting herself at the beginning of the movie, you've seen a movie or two in your day. Her unresting spirit is haunting the hospital and killing anyone who helps dissect her Earthly body. To end the killings, her remains must be burned and returned to the scene of her possession.

If this plot sounds stupid, I promise you it's not nearly as stupid as the dialog.

The only redeeming piece of this movie is the cinematography. There are some interesting shots and great angels. I don't need to tell you that a little fancy camera work can't save a hopelessly muddled plot, terrible acting, and a bunch of characters who don't seem to have any ability to react plausibly to the situations they are in.

Watch it if: you haven't had enough of haunted hospital movies yet. Otherwise, do yourself a favor and watch ANYTHING ELSE instead.

You can watch the Unrest trailer here:

You can watch the Nekromantik trailer here: 

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