ATAQUE DE PÁNICO

¡ATAQUE DE PÁNICO! (PANIC ATTACK!). Federico/"Fede" Álvarez, director, co-script with Rodo/"Rodolfo" Sayagues.[1] Uruguay: Murdoc Films, Paris Texas Casa Productora (production) / YouTube, 2009.[2]

Very short Spanish-language[3] short: 5 minutes.[4]

IMDb logline: "Giant robots invade Montevideo."

Reviewed by Alfredo Suppia, "Southern Portable Panic: Federico Álvarez’s Ataque de Pánico! [film]," brackets in original, SFRA Review #292 (Winter 2010): pp 23-24.[5]

The film opens with video noise and an out of focus long shot of a child playing with toy robots on a misty quayside. The shots come into focus and video noise is added marking the raccords (transitions from one shot to another). The opening credits appear over these initial images. Shortly after, the child stops playing with his robots and turns to the bridge in the background. He feels something strange, a tremor, and then sees a giant machine behind the bridge. A long shot reveals gigantic robot silhouettes in motion. Stunned, the child runs towards the machines, which are partially obscured by mist [...[. Under the bridge, the child contemplates the ["humanoid"] robots and spaceships en route to Montevideo. [* * *]

Immediately linked to American SF film tradition, the invasion of Montevideo featured by Panic Attack! addresses [H. G.] Wellsian imagery first expressed by a Brazilian artist. The giant robots and alien airships clearly evoke the iconography of the 1906 Belgian edition of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, illustrated by Henrique Alvim Corrêa. Therefore, although indirectly, Ataque de Pánico! reminds us about the universal and cosmopolitan aspect of science fiction, reinserting its visual motifs in a multicultural framework. (Suppia, p. 23)

RDE, finishing, 30Mar21