On the face of it The Appeared is a gory, tense and stylish horror film that demonstrates why Argentina is one of the hippest film producing countries in the world. However, what makes this more than just another horror film is its brutal dissection of the individuals who served the military junta which ruled Argentina from 1976-83. As with Guillermo del Toro’s takes on Spain during the Civil War, the toxic effects of political violence manifest themselves in twisted, supernatural ways. And like Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, which dealt with similar times in Chile, The Appeared proves William Faulkner’s old adage: “The past isn’t over. It isn’t even past.”

In the present day, Pablo and his older sister Malena return from Spain to Argentina to approve the switching off of their estranged father’s life support machine. Malena isn‘t entirely sure why they left as a little girl but she knows enough from her mother to understand that their father was not a good man. As the siblings make their way south to the family home in their father’s old car, it becomes apparent that past events are appearing to our protagonists: these are literally the “Appeared” of the title, a tiny fraction of the 30,000 desaparecidos (“disappeared”) of the murderous 1976-83 period. Malena and Pablo may not know how the story of the reappeared is linked to their own, but can the siblings work it out before the past catches up with them?

Paco Cabezas’ feature debut, The Appeared is dark and shocking but perhaps aptly so; in making a film which drills down to the moral vacuum at the core of a vicious military regime, one arguably shouldn’t pull any punches for the sake of politeness. Tense and bloody but shot with imaginitive flair, it’s further proof that South American directors are grappling with genre filmmaking as boldly as they have its more mainstream equivalents.