Coming to a Theater Near You (Sigh): ‘Turistas’

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  11.27.06 | 1:59 PM ET

imageYes, it’s time for yet another movie about travelers getting in over their heads in a foreign country, reassuring the roughly 80 percent of Americans who don’t hold passports that they’re better off limiting their travels to short trips between home and the cineplex anyway, because, hey, it’s scary out there. ‘Turistas,’ which opens in U.S. theaters Dec. 1 and stars Josh Duhamel, apparently tells the story of a group of tourists—excuse me, turistas—who get lost in the Brazilian jungle and suffer a series of terrifying and even horrifying calamities. It’s the first U.S. film to be shot entirely in Brazil. In today’s Los Angeles Times, director John Stockwell, who also directed “Blue Crush,” said he was inspired to take on the film project after a harrowing experience on a surf trip to Peru.

He’s quoted as saying:

I had been robbed by a group of 13-year-old, glue-sniffing kids and gotten shot at. I went to the cops, and they basically told us, “If you give us $300, we’ll let you kill these kids.” And I thought, if that kind of [stuff] is possible…. I came home and read the script and it resonated.”

Ugh.

Or rather, increible.