Set primarily in a Sao Paolo apartment complex, the plot revolves around Malu (Martha Nowill), a party planner who can’t poop and who has spent years mourning the tragic death of one of her young twins, who died on the toilet, though probably not how you think. Malu processes her grief primarily by working too hard on a wannabe influencer’s gender reveal party and ignoring the surviving twin, Genesis (Benjamin Damini), who’s crying out loudly for any sort of parental affection or attention. Beyond this family drama there’s one key thing, the building’s ancient plumbing has become possessed and the toilets have developed a taste for blood.
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The film sometimes lives up to this ridiculous billing, while other times falling far short. It works best when it lets loose and steers into the absurdity, but the script tries to have it both ways. It wants to explore the lingering trauma of losing a child, gender identity (Genesis is gender fluid, to which Malu responds with a constant slew of transphobic rhetoric), social dynamics, gentrification, and more, at the same there’s a toilet that eats a cat. Gewdner and Vinagre never quite balance the tones, swinging between melodrama, satire, and gross out horror. These various facets, while often entertaining, never fully gel, leaving a disjointed feeling.
The length doesn’t do anything to assuage these issues. At 111 minutes, it’s bloated and overfull. This is a building full of quirky side characters and superfluous storylines. The influencer mom has a one-legged stepson she hates, the long-time handyman is being forced out by building management to save money, and, of course, the “scat mystic,” which is a phrase I never imagined typing in my life. It’s exactly what it sounds like, she reads people’s bowel movements like tea leaves. And tacks them to her wall. It can’t smell good in her apartment. The film falls in love with these characters to its detriment. Though they provide moments of texture and humor, they bog down the momentum and blow the tempo when so much could easily be excised and trimmed.
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Also, for a movie that revolves around feces, it’s not always as gross as one might expect. Probably for the best, if we’re being honest. There’s certainly a stinky ick permeating the whole thing, but it could have gone much, much further. Until the last 18 minutes or so, where it fully becomes the movie it promised from the get go, including a clown crapping himself, ceilings raining sloppy diarrhea, and a baby-eating toilet. They really go for it in the final stretch, you have to give them that.
There are fun and interesting elements to find in Bowels of Hell, but so much of it simply doesn’t land. It’s never as dramatic or funny or satirical or scary as it needs to be to truly sell any single one of those angles. You can’t help but wonder what it could have been if the filmmakers committed to one track and focused on that. Instead, it tries to be all of those things—comedy, horror, drama—but ultimately winds up a sloppy, unformed deuce made up of all of them. [Grade: C]
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