Highly Overrated But Still Good

Brilliant and touching

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

This movie is slower than an European art-house movie. As a horror, it doesn't scare one bit. The dialogue is stiff and the story is very vague. The actual "scary" parts would not scare a 8 year old child that pees in the bed every day and cannot watch the Teletubes cause the songs are too sinister. I could spend two hours just watching my bedroom wall and be more entertained. Watch if you're using drugs.

Reading the professional reviews you can get he wrong impression about this film but make no mistake: this is one of those cases where you can only fully enjoy and understand its premise if you are immersed in the same reality where the film takes place. This is not like saying that it doesn't carry any universal meaning - it's quite obvious that it has a social discussion along the subtle horror atmosphere it creates... but what kind of discussion? Helena and Otavio are a middle-class Brazilian couple with one daughter. This is important: the person watching this movie without knowing about Brazilian standards of living may not recognize these characters as middle-class but rather poor people which is not the case. Otavio is getting older and lose his job to a younger co-worker. Helena, living the dream of entrepreneurship, opens a grocery store. Along with these two, there's Paula, a maid/baby-sitter who works for the couple. While Helena starts as a sweet and caring person, she turns soar when she starts to see herself as an "owner" and the person bringing money to the house, treating her workers pretty badly, including the maid who's also object of hostility from Otavio's upper middle-class mother. Our middle-class have two main beliefs: meritocracy (a supposedly rationalist organization of society based on merit despite the absurd economic disparity) and superstition (irrationalism). Helena, dealing with the several difficulties of being an entrepreneur, starts to believe that somebody is using dark forces to make her business go down: naturally one of her employees. From then on she gets more and more involved in this search for an explanation that excuses her for the fear of failure on being the owner of a store and the growing tensions with her employees that are product of her growing intransigence. Otavio, on the other hand, fears that he became obsolescent and too old for the market. He starts to become interested on self-help workshops to "empower" himself and "release the beast inside" so he can have a place in the jungle of the marketplace. This is another regional aspect: this kind of stuff is epidemic in Brazil, growing along with the process of deregulation of work and the intensification of precariousness in terms of labor rights and legislation. The message is simple: it's all up to you, whether you succeed or fail. Otavio already sees himself as a failure and the movie ends with an intense image of him shrieking out of desperation along with a bunch of grown men screaming like apes because a inspirational speaker told them to release their "primitive" side. These aspects may clarify the themes of the film in order to not be comprehended simply as a horror movie with social consciousness. It's a highly symbolic work that speaks directly to the Brazilian middle-class about their fears, their fantasies of power and their difficulty to cope with personal failure. For that matter, this a quite interesting and important work that can be enjoyed by all but only fully understood when you know these particular realities.

The original title is Trabalhar Cansa, or Work Tires You, a somewhat humorous expression translated as Hard Labor. The title suggests a comedy, but this movie is nothing of the sort. The first half is a tragedy happening everywhere today; Otávio, a man in his forties living with his family in Sao Paulo loses his well paid job and becomes unemployable or, at best, a member of the Gig Economy; his options reduce to temporary, low paid jobs below his level of training without security or benefits. The movie shows the damage to Otávio's self image, and its consequences for Otávio's relation with his wife Helena. Helena was planning to open a grocery store at the time of Otávio's firing. She goes ahead with the idea but difficulties arise some expected, some of a very sinister sort, such as a grisly discovery inside one of the store's walls. At this point the movie veers into the horror genre and we suspect there is an unknown force working against the couple. At the end, we are back with Otávio trying to build up his confidence to find a viable job option and Helena struggling with her business, and we wonder if the horror episode was dreamed or imagined, or if it's a symbol of something hidden in the couple's past. This movie is hard to watch at times; there is an edgy, uncomfortable feeling in most scenes and a sense of impending doom. The script by directors Marco Dutra and Juliana Rojas is first rate, as are acting, production values and direction. A movie to consider.