Legions (Legiones)

 Antonio Poyjú is a shaman, a warlock - though he prefers to be called a mediator between worlds. His is a sacred bloodline, powerful against demons.
 Not that the law gives a shit; Turns out killing a possessed person still counts as manslaughter.

 Played as an old man by Germán de Silva, he whiles away his days at the nuthouse, with the other inmates hanging on his every word as he tells stories of his demon wrangling glory days in the jungles of northern Argentina.

 When he was younger (and played by Fernando Alcaraz) he lived in a hut with his family in the subtropical rainforests of Misiones. Life was good until a demon killed his wife and stole his daughter's faith; Unable to keep young Elena interested in the life of a witch doctor, he takes her to Buenos Aires, where his sometimes violent interventions with evil spirits soon ge him into trouble with the law - and his matter-of-factness about the spirit world gets him institutionalized.

  Things seem placid enough; Antonio is the pragmatic sort, so he just bides his time and entertains his fellow inmates, who are so enraptured by his stories that they decide to mount a stage play about them. But the demons haven't forgotten about his sacred bloodline; with a lunar eclipse looming, another witch comes to warn him that an old enemy from across the veil will try to sacrifice his daughter.

 So Antonio needs to break free from the madhouse, make peace with his daughter (Lorena Vega), and kill the demon.

 Writer/Director Fabián Forte provides an entertaining yarn with a pretty strange, off-kilter tone - it's comedy-first, but there are very few jokes, relying instead on deadpan quirk, mildly ridiculous situations and comedic understatement. That sort of thing can grate, and I'm sure it will for some, but a cast of very game, often very funny actors (kudos to the inmates - Mauro Altschuler, Marta Haller and Victor Malagrino for keeping things lively) and pair of strong central performances from de Silva and Vega help keep things from ever getting insufferable.

 It also helps that there's a strong, believable emotional centre to Antonio and Elena's relationship, and that it's integral to the film's plot. 

The filmmaking is pretty good, giving each locale its own distinct personality (Cinematographer: Mariano Suarez), and Pablo Fuu's off-kilter soundtrack is excellent. If those names sound familiar, Forte was an assistant director for Terrified/Aterrados, and there's a lot of overlap between his crew and regulars from Demián Rugna's movies.

 The horror aspects are OK; It's not a particularly scary movie, despite some good atmosphere, but that's not what it's shooting for anyhow. The mayhem never tops the first scene where young Antonio has to exorcise a very limber possession victim (the film uses physical contortionists to great effect), but there's a montage where he whips up some shamanistic tools, a couple of freaky rituals that use Santeria/Umbanda's reliance on cigar smoking to good effect, and a finale where a couple of demons break free to wreak some carnage and stretch the (very limited) budget a little.

 The film ends up collapsing under the weight of genre expectations - it's a rare film that makes me think it might be better off without a jaw ripped off and a reference to Poltergeist 2's demonic tequila worm - but, well... it still has a jaw ripped off and a reference to Poltergeist 2's demonic tequila worm. That counts for something, right?