Panic Fest 2025 Coverage
1978 review
1978 uses real world events to build a dark story that takes a fantastical turn.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
1978
Directed by Luciano Onetti and Nicolas Onetti
Written by Luciano Onetti, Nicolas Onetti and Camilo Zaffora
Starring Augustin Olcese, Mario Alarcon, Carlos Portaluppi, Santiago Rios, Jorge Lorenzo, Agustin Pardella and Ezequiel Pache
1978 Review
The extent of my knowledge of political strife in 1978 Argentina is limited to a Wikipedia page. That I skimmed. Some of. I know that the World Cup was held in the country that year…and that Argentina took home their first ever world championship. This was also learned from skimming a Wikipedia page. I will now impart to you the totality of my knowledge of Argentina in 1978…so that we may begin this review on the same page. Argentina won the World Cup in front of home fans while…something bad…was going on. There. All caught up.
You don’t need to know anything more than that to watch 1978. These points are made abundantly clear in the film’s gripping opening scene. Men sit around a card table, complaining about having to work during the World Cup Final(s?). They discuss Argentina’s chances in the big game…and play out their hands. A man on the losing team concedes defeat without showing his card. His partner grabs the card and sees he was sitting on an Ace and asks why. The camera turns to show that his partner is a hostage…bound and gagged…terrified for his life. The scene ends with a bag over his head and a bullet quickly follows.
Everything you need to know about the first half of 1978 is set up in these dynamic and harrowing opening moments. We’ve talked about economy of script before…1978’s opening scene puts on a masterclass. Before the title card arrives, we understand the situation, the tone has been set, and we’ve been introduced to some very bad people who think they’re doing a very good thing. They’ve kidnapped a group of young people to interrogate them about their communist regime. None of them seem eager to crack. Or, at least, none of them are offering up the answers these men want.
1978 makes an interesting play quickly into its story. It introduces us to Miguel (Agustin Olcese) …a member of the kidnappers who clearly isn’t on board with the torture and killing he’s been tasked to do. His reticence has caught the attention of Moro (Mario Alarcon), a man who isn’t afraid to get his hands very dirty. Providing a relatable torturer is a strange move. The rest of his crew is full of abhorrent characters. Men who take glee in their horrible works. Men who feel big threatening women under their control.
There’s a reason 1978 provides a member of this crew to side with…even if it will take over half of the movie to figure out why that is. The best guess I could muster was that Miguel was some kind of double agent…and that 1978 would be a movie about survival/escape and, probably, violent revenge. I was wrong. There isn’t a hint about what 1978 is going to be about until about a half an hour into the movie. Even then…it’s just a strange tattoo on one of the hostage’s arms. Not much to go on. But it was enough to be noted.
Halfway through 1978’s inhumane torture film…things start to become clear. Moro, enjoying his work inflicting the most pain he can muster upon an uncooperative prisoner, receives a phone call. It’s his commanding officer. They’ve kidnapped the wrong group of people. This doesn’t deter Moro from performing his ghastly torture. What does stop him, however, is a whisper from the man whose tooth he’s just ripped out. Suddenly, 1978 changes form into something completely different than it had been…or seemed to be going.
We’ll leave the particulars of what 1978 has up its sleeve out of this non-spoiler review, of course. But it’s important to know that half of the movie is disgusting men torturing (and murdering) innocent people. And the second half is an entirely different beast. The purpose of offering up a jailer to side with becomes clear. “They’ve kidnapped the wrong group of people” becomes the understatement 1978. The year…and the movie.
I can’t say that it’s fun watching 1978. We spend a lot of time around people you don’t want to spend time with. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of hope on the horizon for the hostages. When the turn happens…1978 becomes something more interesting than it is entertaining. There are fun moments, for sure…but the darkness that hangs over the story only manages to grow darker. The first half of 1978 takes place while Argentina’s World Cup victory plays out in the background. When that game is over…so too is the game that 1978’s captors been running to that point. What follows is a new, deadlier game. One that flips the script into a different genre entirely.
Scare Value
The first half of 1978 is an effective little thriller. The bad guys are suitably bad. The violence is realistic and unsettling. There’s almost no sign of what’s to come. Then 1978 changes shapes completely. A story about torture turns into a revenge film…as you might expect. But not in the way you’d have predicted…even moments before the change occurs.
