Twenty-somethings ending up somewhere bad while traveling. It’s a trope as old, at least, as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and it’s a trope that just keeps on giving. Why not? We’re a traveling people. Seeing new things and meeting strangers is what we do during those occasions when we are able to toss off the shackles. Some of us have even been in sketchy situations far from home. Some have been robbed or worse. Who knows? Maybe some of us have been closer to never coming home than we ever knew.
From 2006 comes Turistas, written by Michael Arlen Ross and directed by John Stockwell, whom horror fans might remember for his portrayal of Dennis in Christine. Turistas follows western tourists in Brazil, and the trouble in which they find themselves. The film opens with a harrowing bus ride through the jungle that introduces us to the hapless protagonists. There is Alex (Josh Duhamel); his sister, Bea (Olivia Wilde); her friend, Amy (Beau Garrett); mates from England Finn and Liam (Desmond Askew and Max Brown); and experienced world traveler, Pru (Melissa George).
After the bus has a mishap, the protagonists wander down to a nearby beach that has great views and a bar with cheap drinks. They drink and dance into the night with the locals, including Kiko (Agles Steib), an enthusiastic young man who practices his broken English with the turistas. More drinking, more dancing, and then…blackout. They wake up the next 
day stripped of everything except their clothes. Passports, money, luggage, jewelry — all gone. The women have even had their shoes stolen. They wander up to the nearby village, where their robbers surely live, and get in a fracas with the locals. Kiko shows up, though, and leads them away into the jungle, towards, he says, his uncle’s house, where they will be able to get a ride to some proper help.
The house in the jungle might as well be the house of the Three Bears. It has a generator, hot water, loads of food, and liquor for the thirstier members of the group. Of course, it also happens to be the home of this flick’s bad guy, Dr. Zamora, who has been responsible for a string of tourist disappearances in the area.
What follows is a satisfying bit of cat and mouse between the turistas and Zamora and his henchmen. It’s nothing unfamiliar, but it does subvert expectations somewhat. Turistas was released right in the middle of the torture porn era of horror. Saw and Hostel set the standard. These flicks took gore, and set decoration, to ghastly levels. Turistas sets itself up as another entry in this subgenre, but it pulls back. Stockwell and company decided to rely more on tension and thrills, rather than viscera, to tell the story. There are some grisly moments, but they are organic to the story. Gratuitous violence is not something Missile Test is against in a horror flick, yet here is a movie that shows it doesn’t have to be the dominant feature.
Turistas also did well with casting. Duhamel and Wilde were young talents just about to break out, and Askew had been working since he was a child, although he was hamming things up. Films like this don’t normally have that much talent in their leads.
Turistas is a tight film in a classic three act structure. Beach, jungle, house. The end. It is horror, but not all horror. The thriller elements are just as important, and meant that Stockwell didn’t need to tick items off of a list to keep horror fans satisfied. Mostly regarded as a middling feature, I found a movie that, instead, kept me paying attention.