Red Cockroaches

Year: 2004

Grade: C

Country: Cuba

Director: Coyula

Review

very amateurish production with a story about a man who unwittingly falls in love with his sister, then, wittingly, has relations with her. all this is set amongst the backdrop of an undeveloped story about the world being taken over by acid rains and red cockroaches.

the most striking thing about the picture, unfortunately, is the poor production. from what i can tell it was made on an extremely small budget, and it shows. the odd thing is that it really wasn’t necessary to make the film a pseudo-sci-fi. the story, which mostly revolves around the relationship between the protagonist and his sister, didn’t need to take place in amongst the sci-fi backdrop. apparently the film is part of a trilogy, so perhaps there’s something that happens in the other two pictures which illuminates the background elements of the film.

i should say, though, that the non-sci-fi portions of the picture were somewhat intriguing. the relationship between the two main characters, her performance, etc. had some potential that was prematurely truncated. coyula’s direction featured some good composition and interesting storytelling devices, but was bogged down by the sfx. despite the bad production values i might actually watch the other two films if i find them.