Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Los Iniciados’ on Prime Video, A Suspenseful, Oppressive Drama from Colombia Where A City Has Run Out Of Water

In Los Iniciados (Prime Video), or “The Initiated,” a disgraced journalist lives in a distressed, nightmarish near future version of Bogota, Colombia where fresh water is scarce and the constant falling rain is an insult to the citizenry since it’s totally and completely toxic. And when marginalized people start to disappear, a conspiracy of greed is uncovered that implicates the city’s wealthy elite. Los Iniciados is adapted from Lady Massacre, the 2013 novel from Colombian writer Mario Mendoza, who serves as an executive producer here.   

LOS INICIADOS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? 

The Gist: In this city, every available water source has gone bone dry, everyday people are struggling, all of the cops are corrupt, and the rich and powerful few live gilded lives insulated from the sorry state of the world. Not only is the scarcity of fresh water causing the spread of diseases like tuberculosis and leprosy; the incessant rain that falls here is poisoned by pollution, but desperate people still choose to drink it and die rather than perish from no water at all. Frank (Andres Parra) was once a prominent journalist and professor. Now he drinks and gambles too much, periodically falls off his bipolar meds, and can’t even find work at a tabloid rag because he won’t lower himself to writing sensationalist drivel. Beyond the rising suicide rate, individuals who live in a hardbitten area known as the Kasbah are also disappearing with increasing frequency, and Frank has discovered that their bodies don’t end up in the morgue. When this fate befalls his friend Monica (trans artist and singer LoMaasBello), a freelance journalist who published articles protesting the Kasbah revitalization project of Mayor Ignacio Pombo (Juan Pablo Urrego), Frank’s investigation uncovers a wider conspiracy involving greed and the elusive promise of fresh water.

Gaby (Aria Jara), Monica’s best friend and a luchadora who wrestles under a black mask and the totally awesome moniker of “Lady Massacre,” is not buying it that her pal committed suicide. (She’s also the secret lover of Ignacio.) And while Gaby isn’t very trusting of Frank at first, she knows he was once Monica’s journalism school mentor, and she’s receptive to his emerging theory that individuals are being permanently disappeared so that somebody can gain control of the property they own. Pretty soon Frank’s got one of those giant maps in his ramshackle apartment, where red lines connect people and places and assorted mysteries, and pieces of the puzzle are thumbtacked to handwritten notes. “It’s all connected!” he shouts to his former editor at the city’s only major daily. But without hard evidence, she won’t publish a thing. And besides, how reliable is Frank? He hasn’t been taking his pills.

Ignacio’s father Augusto Pombo (Jorge Cao) was mayor before him, and still wields power from his mansion. Augusto is sick, his body deteriorating without ready access to fresh water, but with his location of an ancient artifact, he believes he’s found a map to the “Snake’s Nest,” a font of water deep underground which the native people of the region believed contained healing powers. Augusto isn’t going to let anyone stop him from finding that water. Not Ignacio, and certainly not the people. “That water isn’t going to be bottled,” he seethes to his son. “It will be mine, and if a million people have to die for me to live one more day, so be it.”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of? The near-future angle isn’t really emphasized in Los Iniciados beyond a general understanding that humanity has ravaged the earth’s natural resources. There are no flying cars here. Instead, the pelting rain falls on alleyways crowded with chaotic retail stalls and people pushing through endless throngs of umbrellas and shreds of plastic sheeting. The imagery sometimes suggests Matt Reeves’ The Batman, or Deckard – in either of his Blade Runner incarnations – wolfing down ramen in a drippy streetside kiosk. And, of course, any movie that involves a water shortage and the nefarious ends people will go to get it recalls Chinatown.

Performance Worth Watching: Andres Parra plays a man on the edge very well. As Frank, he consistently shifts the intensity in his eyes from that of a dogged journalist who still knows the ropes to something that flirts on the frayed margins of mental frailty. 

Memorable Dialogue: Frank knows he’s onto something as he pieces together the water conspiracy. But he hasn’t been taking his medicine, and still experiences manic episodes. Rage combines with mania as he walks the streets at night, raving at strangers. “Monica knew very well we were initiated into the horror. She knew we were being pushed into a bottomless pit, an infinite abyss. Hitting against the walls, bouncing off of them, getting smashed. Me, my voice, the dead, the water, the rain, the blood – everyone under the same fucking fear.”

Sex and Skin: Nothing explicit. Ignacio and Gaby have a conversation in their underwear after sex we don’t see. Later, they kiss and paw at each other.

Our Take: The mood of Los Iniciados is oppressive. With the acid rain that constantly falls, and people hobbling through it with hunched shoulders and mildewed newspapers tented over their heads, you half expect water to start pouring from the ceiling over your television. Figure in a litany of other sad places – suicides in crumbling buildings, a pallid city morgue, and red-lit subterranean punk rock clubs where young people slam dance away the pains of living without water – and Iniciados has a grimness that’s hard to shake. And when that mood meshes with a plot that tends to plod rather than really engage with its most interesting elements, the film can also have you wishing for a respite from all of the gloom. 

Those interesting elements do hold promise, however. We don’t see enough of them, but the matches where Lady Massacre fights before a raucous crowd of bettors clad in homemade versions of her black leather luchadora mask are visually rich, and marked by some crushing punches and throws. And while we never learn exactly why all of the potable water dried up – Los Iniciados doesn’t probe that question with any commentary on environmental stewardship; it just drops us into the toxic rain aftermath – there are some intriguing links between the world it builds and the ancient past. Ultimately, the film seems most interested in portraying the city as a living thing, a beast must consume or die. Whenever the news articles written by Frank or Monica are heard in voiceover, they ring with language of slaying monsters and lost souls falling into unfathomable abysses. These passages ring with a literary flair that must be a large part of the book Los Iniciados is based on, and they give its lead, Andres Parra, more than few chances to chew some wet, rainy scenery.   

Our Call: STREAM IT. There are interesting, suspenseful elements drifting between the incessant raindrops in Los Iniciados, just enough to outlast its dour vibe and slow to develop plotting.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges