Infiesto

Infiesto is an involving, if somewhat familiar, creepy, unsettling serial killer story and, like others in the sub-genre, part police procedural and part horror movie. The sets, locations, clothes, and faces are all variations on the same gray-green palette, soaked in rain, with thunder shouting pessimism, doom, and unavoidable horror ahead. The choices are deliberate, creating a kind of color version of film noir, complete with the dread and fear of annihilation.

The procedural part is oddly messy -- the cops obliviously trample one crime scene after another with nary a forensic glove in sight, as if noir's retro post-war era is where we've been sent by the pandemic. That unreality is unleashed in the last ten minutes when a cop makes idiotic moves that no sane officer would ever make. No matter what the police do to rid the world of psychopathic murderers, we hear the refrain, "This is just the beginning." And that phrase seems to refer to a violent and inevitable end for all of us. At the same time we are dragged into the world of cults and ancient Celtic beliefs regarding the end of the world, the early stage of a pandemic rages. People are dying day and night. The movie suggests there might be a connection between the two.