While you may not see everything with your own eyes, enough is established through suggestion or overhead dialogue that the viewer will be entombed beneath an avalanche of unspeakable horror. To find another movie that disturbs me on this level, I would need to go back to the black library to In A Glass Cage. The fact that A Yard Of Jackals is based on stuff that really happened in the 70s makes it all the scarier. I commend Figueroa for dropping us in the middle of the action cold, with no explanation as to what was going on in Chile at that time. He just shows how everyday life slowly gets chewed up and swallowed by a nightmare.
“…expands the boundaries of film and horror past the edge of the map.”
There is a lot of firepower stylistically in A Yard of Jackals, with all of it serving the grotesque substance. The miniatures and handmade figurines are hypnotizing and elevate the movie repeatedly. Figueroa does for miniatures what Bava did for mannequins: make them visual symbols of how far in style horror can go. At the end, the plot goes total mind bender, blowing the viewer’s perceived reality apart in the cleverest way. It is similar to the big swing Lost Highway took, except Figueroa knocks it completely out of the park, with the audience riding it all the way over the wall. By keeping things simple and direct, the big reveal is understandable and impressive. It is both utterly disconcerting and makes sense in a fundamental way unthought of before.
This movie is the reason why movies still matter in the future. Right when you think the form cannot compete with snippet scrolling or serialized TV shows, something like A Yard of Jackals bursts out, showing what can be done in a couple of hours in the dark. Not only are you whisked off to another world, but you are also plunged into the middle of the most inhuman atrocities committed under institutional approval. Please, will someone at Netflix put this guy behind the long-awaited adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch? He already has the skills to make all the little Perky Pat dollhouses that the drug addicts on Mars can handle. The movie expands the boundaries of film and horror past the edge of the map. Turns out there are still dragons flying out there on the horizon of the cinematic arts.
"…the reason why movies still matter in the future."
