The lurid and propulsive Mexican-set thriller Lost in the Night presents another genre swerve for Amat Escalante after his gnarly and erotic body horror The Untamed (2016), but still retains the director’s penchant for discordance with extreme acts of violence and provocations. Escalante continues to infuse his gritty genre excursions with social realism by foregrounding the experience of contemporary Mexican society as fuelled by inter-communal tensions, class inequality, rampant police corruption and dead bodies piling up in water tanks. The title, with its hint of a noir-ish mystery, is a perfect teaser for the dark procedural that follows.
A brisk and efficient prologue introduces us to a group of social-activists who are seen opposing the opening of a mine in Mexico’s Guanajuato state. Soon after, they are being brutally handled by the local police force and never to be seen again. Three years later, and the focus is now on the son of one of the missing activists Emiliano (Juan Daniel Garcia Trevino), a disaffected 20-year-old, who is still not sure what happened to his mother on that fateful night. After a chance encounter with a dying policeman in a hospital, Emiliano is given key information about his mother’s disappearance, which leads him to the strikingly modernist and affluent lakeside home of the Aldamas — a conceptual artist provocateur Rigoberto “Rigo” (Fernando Bonilla), his middle-aged pop-singer girlfriend Carmen (Barbara Mori) and her bratty, social-media obsessed daughter Monica (Ester Expósito).
Along with his teenage girlfriend Jazmin (Maria Fernanda Osio), Emiliano befriends the family and, rather implausibly, ends up getting a job as a handyman, all while acting as an amateur sleuth in an attempt to glean more information about their connection to his mother. Matters are further complicated when Emiliano strikes up a flirtatious relationship with the volatile and emotionally vulnerable Ester, who spends her time filming fake suicide attempts to post to social media. There is also the added tension between the family and a local religious sect, and Rigo’s close friendship with a corrupt cop which further arouses ours and Emiliano’s suspicions that something is not quite right with this family. Interestingly, the most compelling character is the house itself, full of strange artworks and shot in expressionist angles.
There are so many plot strands and thematic preoccupations at play here as Escalante weaves complex themes such as the nature of justice, celebrity, ecological issues and the role of the artist. In particular, the character of Rigo, who brazenly suggests to Emiliano that he can make an art piece out of the young man’s quest for his missing mother, seems to be a self-reflexive proxy for the director himself. Escalante is a director who also draws upon exploitation to create art out of contemporary social tragedies, and the film approaches the question of an artist’s responsibility yet doesn’t give definitive answers. It’s both admirable and frustrating in its elusiveness.
It’s a shame that the final act breathlessly jumps from one set-piece revelation to another in almost pummelling fashion, making the climax feel needlessly drawn out and implausible. There is also a sense that Escalate is inching closer towards a more mainstream sensibility. The descent into more schematic, generic territory might be the result of Esclante being a hired hand on the Netflix series Narcos: Mexico. The lurch towards populism is also echoed in the cranked up Western-inflected score from Stranger Things composers Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein. Unfortunately, Lost in the Night loses momentum and narrative rigour as it trundles toward its overly busy climax; trying to tackle fame, politics, crime and the art world is a densely complex gambit that doesn’t quite pay off. Surprisingly, it does end on a note of fairy tale optimism, which is new, uncharted terrain for Escalante, but even this happiness seems fleeting and momentary. Still, there is a haunting power to this flawed and messy thriller.
