Macabre…ish Horror Review: Beneath Us
Beneath Us, 2019/ 1 hr 30 min
Migrants looking for work, talk themselves into a job for the wrong family’s house. But they negotiate with the lady if the house, Liz Rhodes (Lynn Collins), for $500 each and it seems like a good deal.
The woman seems wealthy and she drives the four men to a gated estate near the mountains. But one of the men, Memo (Josue Aguirre), is uneasy and it gets a little worse when he finds hair wrapped around a drill bit, while they work. Hector (Roberto Sanchez), who is married, aggressively flirts with the lady of the house until he realizes she’s married. And when the others laugh at him, he gets violent.
Night falls and the Rhodes head to bed for the night, so the men keep working and now the men wonder if the Rhodes are trying to stiff them. But they won’t leave without pay and spend the night. When they are all asleep, Mrs. Rhodes hoses them down with the hose. She doesn’t offer to pay them but she does threaten to replace them. And she demands they work through the night.
They notice Mr. Rhodes, Ben, around but he says nothing to them. Memo then discovers the fence around the property is an electric fence. Then the brothers, Alejandro (Rigo Sanchez) and Memo, start to fight because they have not slept and are exhausted. Then Tonio (Thomas Chavira) cuts himself with a saw and tries to get help from Ms. Rhodes who instead of helping, threatens them more. And pours alcohol on the wound.
So they start brain storming ways to escape once they realize, other than the electric fence, there’s an alarm and the gate’s locked. Hector takes the direct approach and breaks into the house to get the key and when he steps outside, he gets shot by Mr. Rhodes. Once on the ground, Mrs. Rhodes drives the heal of her show into his head until he’s dead.
Then Mr. Rhodes turns into an overseer and his insane wife turns on music she thinks will lighten the mood and comes out with her own shotgun and attacks Memo.
Later, Mr. Rhodes spends his time trying to ingratiate himself with Alejandro. While his wife rants and raves about undocumented immigrants and ‘teaches them English’ while Tonio and Memo scrubs Hector’s blood off the patio.
When company comes the men are tied up and hidden in the orchard along with Hector’s corpse. The Rhodes’ are evidently looking to sell the place.
Later, Liz forces the men to get naked under the threat of death and then makes them dig what looks like graves. Tonio is struggling and so Mr. Rhodes (James Tupper) knocks him out with a shovel. The brothers thinking they’re about to die, they get their clothes back just before dark.
Memo sees an opportunity and takes it by cutting the power line he finds in his hole. Then they scatter, including Tonio, who makes it over the fence. While Memo and Alejandro look for keys but they are thwarted. The next day they wake up in a hole, a cellar of sorts, surrounded by the remains of other workers before them.
Meanwhile, the couple that comes to see the house are Latin, Homero (Nicholas Gonzalez) and Sandra (Edy Ganem), and Liz has to bite her tongue. While looking over the guest house, Sandra, hears sounds under the floor. And she asks about other the photos of the houses on the wall. It’s the Rhodes’ other houses, they are flippers.
Later that night, Memo breaks through the guest house floor and drags his injured brother up behind him. But he has to go get help, Alejandro can’t walk. But Alejandro doesn’t want him to come back.
The Rhodes finds Alejandro and decides to torture him but Ben gets the short end of that stick. Then he goes after Liz and lights fires as he goes, he intends to burn this graveyard to the ground.
This horror/thriller was directed by Max Pachman. This movie is exactly what I expected and it was hard to watch. Well made, well cast and tough to watch. It’s a social commentary that very much parrallels history. The ending is great and terrible but it’s very true to a real end, it was a long horrible road and then if you survive, you keep going. The film is in English and Spanish.