Camino del infierno: A dusty relic from the archives

Is it worth your time?

If you get a kick out of seeing how movies were put together when sound was still a relatively new party trick, then sure. It's a curiosity. But if you have zero patience for actors who seem to be projecting their lines to the back row of a theater while standing six inches away from each other? Skip it. You'll probably hate it if you need a plot that actually moves forward without stopping to stare at the scenery for ten minutes.

Watching Camino del infierno feels like looking at a photo album from a family you don't actually know. The camera just sort of… hangs there. It doesn't do much. It waits for the actors to walk into the frame, deliver a heavy line, and then exit left. It’s stiff. Really, really stiff.

Ralph Navarro is doing a lot of work with his eyebrows here. I think he’s supposed to be menacing, but it mostly just looks like he’s trying to remember if he left the stove on back home. It reminded me a bit of the heavy-handed tension in The Devil's Prize, where everything feels like a life-or-death confrontation even when they’re just talking about the weather.

There’s a scene about midway through—or maybe it was the end? Honestly, the timeline gets a bit mushy—where the silence just stretches. It feels like the director was terrified of the cut. It’s not atmospheric. It’s just empty.

Small observations from the screen:

• The lighting is incredibly harsh. Like, 'we just found this one lamp and we are going to use it' harsh.
• I’m pretty sure one of the extras in the background is just reading a newspaper and hoping nobody notices.
• The dialogue is so dramatic it makes soap operas look like documentaries.

It’s funny how movies like this share a weird, static DNA with stuff like Perdida. They both have this obsession with shadows and people staring intensely into the middle distance. But where those films find a rhythm, this one just sort of bumps along. It's like a car with a flat tire that the driver refuses to acknowledge.

I found myself checking my watch. A lot. It’s not that the story is bad—it’s just told with the urgency of a snail crossing a highway. 🐌

Maybe it’s just not for me. Maybe someone else sees the soul in these flickering, scratchy frames. But for me? It’s a museum piece. You look at it, you acknowledge the effort, and then you put it back in the box.