Never shut your eyes while driving - Kilometre 31 (2006)

AKA KM31 or Hell's Highway


You know the drill, someone's driving along the road, not paying attention and out steps someone or something creepy who stalks them for the rest of the film. That's pretty much true here except Kilometre 31 starts a little bit like Ils but with a more supernatural aggressor. This is Mexico's version of the hit and run urban legend. Vamonos!

A young woman named Agata is wiping her eyes when she hits a boy with her car. She gets out and calls for help just as she hears the boy laugh and start to sing. She takes a look at his face and while startled by his odd, ghostly appearance she is knocked down by a truck. Suffering horrendous injuries, she is confined to a coma. Sharing a bond with her twin sister Catalina, she becomes haunted by apparitions of a woman and young boy.

I'm not sure if I've seen a Mexican horror before but it had a distinctly Asian feel and I don't know if that was deliberate or incidental. All the Japanese horror hallmarks were there; ghosts playing terrible tricks and children that like to scare the shit out of you. These came to a head in a tragic scene of a man being fooled in to killing the love of his life.

I loved the score, it was genuinely haunting music that filled you with dread, often used as cheap scares but fun and most effective nonetheless. KM31 had a minimal story but I must admit, the scares felt a little relentless at times; a scene looks like it's coming to an end and then the TV comes on by itself, you think it's safe to take a breath when you see something lurking over someone's shoulder... To sum up, nowhere near as bad as people make out!

If this film and it's various sub-genre cousins can teach you anything it would probably be to keep your eyes on the road. And if you do hit any dead people, call the effing cops and get the eff outta there.