Directing: B-
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B

It’s said that Bacurau is packed with subtext, so it may very well be that it works better for Brazilian audiences, or at least non-Brazilians with a deep knowledge of Brazilian history and politics. I must admit that I am almost completely ignorant of such things, save for such broad details as their horrible President Bolsonaro, or Brazilian wildfire deforestation, neither of which are referenced at all in this film. At least not directly. Whatever co-directors Juliano Dornelles and Kleber Mendonça Filho are getting at with this film exactly, I don’t have a clue what it is. I feel like I need some sort of cinematic version of Cliffs Notes.

The film doesn’t even seem to know what genre it is, and I sure don’t. It certainly can’t settle on a particuar tone. Consider the genres listed for it on IMDb.com: adventure, horror, mystery, thriller, western. The very beginning, when a young woman and a young man are returning to the rural Brazilian town of the film’s title, feels much like a documentary without narration. The woman has returned to pay her respects to the town’s matriarch, who has recently passed. The entire town is in mourning.

I great deal of time is spent setting the scene here, with not much of anything at all going on. It goes on long enough to make even the most dedicated viewer lose interest. Bacurau does get interesting, if never quite coherent, but did it have to insist on waiting until well over half its 131 minute run time to do so? I’d be tempted to get far more critical even than this, but for the fear that maybe there’s more to this film that I’m just not seeing due to my ethnocentric perspective on it.

Bacurau is certainly unique, I’ll give it that. At least three times, you become convinced you’re starting to get what kind of movie it is, and it throws you for a loop. Locals in this small town discover that Bacurau seems to have disappeared from all digital maps, and they lose their phone signals. A pair of motorbike riders, presumed tourists, show up, soon after several members of a farm family outside of town are discovered bloody and murdered. And a drone that’s in the shape of a B-movie UFO starts to get spotted flying overhead.

It took me a minute even to realize it was supposed to be a drone, as opposed to an actual UFO that’s just being rendered with terrible special effects. There’s a moment that feels very Ed Wood, until you realize what’s actually going on. And this is where Bacurau most severely turns on its own head, introducting non-local characters who all speak English to each other. Even that gets dangerously close to spoiler territory, and I don’t want to ruin it . . . although for whom, I have no idea. Who in the world would I ever convince to watch this movie?

Maybe someone who is intrigued by this tidbit: Bacurau winds up being an ultra-violent film. I suppose fans of Quentin Tarantino might enjoy it, although Tarantino at least writes stories whose pieces all fit together, even when he’s playing with time. Bacurau is entirely linear in its presentation; it just has pieces that, while they do fit together in the end, you still can’t quite make out the picture once they’re all fastened together. Is it about aliens? About something supernatural? These questions actually get answered pretty early on, through a series of baits and switches. The opening shot, in fact, is from outer space, looking down on Brazil, closing in on the land as it moves beyond an orbiting satellite. Don’t get attached to anything about that opening shot, because it has little to nothing to do with the rest of the movie. You could say the same amount most of the sequences in the first third or so, in fact.

If you like to be surprised, I suppose, then Bacurau is full of rewards. You just have to wait a long time to get them.

Overall: B-