Marshland

Greetings again from the darkness. The best neo-noir crime thrillers immersed in the grim tone of "True Detective", Stieg Larsson's trilogy and El secreto de sus ojos (The Secret in Their Eyes, 2009) have a way of drawing us into the atmospheric underbelly of society and keeping us grappling for solid ground until a resolution is in place.

I stumbled upon Marshland while searching for international serial-killer thrillers. Marshland really took me by surprise in almost every aspect.

Arguably, a masterpiece. Hung on a clichéd story of 2 teen sisters murdered, and 2 detectives look for whodunit.

The movie is very well shot, photography is awesome, but somehow, due to the good rating, I expected better. I found it impressive but also boring at times.

Marshland: The Deep South: swampy land, poverty, smuggling, heroin trafficking, girls disappear. But this is the Deep South of Spain and it's 1980, a democracy but not really a democracy yet.

Marshland is slow burn, albeit entertaining and intriguing police procedural that takes place in a rural Spain during 1980. In addition to this police investigation we have an interesting character study, as we get to know the two detectives Pedro and Juan.

I have to say this engaging, visually brilliant and disturbing thriller is one very good film.Intense scenes separated by pause of the marshland scenery or surreal scenes like the bird in the room or woman walking in the dark make you pause as an audience and reflect with the detectives.

"la isla minima" is a great movie about those type of places everyone wants out due to lack of opportunities. Placing this at the beggining of the 80's right after franco's dictatorship (i'm portuguese and we're actually were in very similar periods in these times) gives the extra conflict and darkness to the movie, because everyone was 1 - pretty much ashamed to talk about things "outside normality" and 2 -having an utmost respect for leaders and rulers no matter how corrupt or shady they were - unfortunatly both portugal and spain still suffer this mostly in small places like the one depicted here, ewhere everyone knows and needs each other to get into something.

Two cops with conflicting methods and character out to track down a serial killer set admist a corrupt 80's south of Spain. Javier Gutiérrez is the standout for me here, as his character is complex and troubled, with turns of nastiness and charm.