El Incidente El Incidente is a
Mexican fiction thriller film released in the year 2014. The plot of the film follows two criminal
brothers who after getting caught by police race down a stairwell to get away but the stairwell
turns out to be never-ending. At the same time, a bickering family begins a road trip on a road
that never ends and keeps looping on them. The film starts with an old lady lying on
an escalator dressed in a wedding outfit and reminiscing about the time when she was young
and newly married to the love of her life. The scene then transitions to the present
where a small-time criminal named Carlos is seen entering his apartment building in an elevator.
As he enters his apartment, he finds his younger brother, Oliver petrified and restless.
Carlos tries to calm him down and informs him cheerfully that they will no longer need
to do illegal things as their mother has lent him a good amount of money.
But Oliver is still fidgety and before he could explain the reason for his behavior,
Detective Marco Antonio Molina emerges from behind. Seeing him, Carlos flips out and starts
defending himself but the detective has already taken a confession from Oliver by threatening him.
Oliver begs forgiveness but Carlos demands the detective show him the arrest warrant.
Marco admits that he does not have a warrant but still wants to take both the brothers at
gunpoint down the station to interrogate them. Carlos starts panicking and starts fighting Marco.
Oliver helps him too and the duo flee away from their apartment through its stairwell.
Marco pursues them and when he is unable to run down any further, he unintentionally pulls the
gun trigger, shooting Carlos in his leg. Carlos falls down and Oliver starts screaming for help.
Meanwhile, Marco is devastated by his own action and feels puzzled about why he shot Carlos. All
of the sudden, the three of them are startled by the sound of a horrible explosion in the distance.
Carlos’s wound starts bleeding severely so Oliver
puts pressure on it and keeps berating Marco for trying to kill his brother.
Marco loses his cool and takes Oliver to gunpoint, asking him to shut up. When Oliver demands to take
Carlos to the hospital, Marco refuses and tells him that Carlos can be treated at the station.
As the trio start walking down the stairs, they realize that the stairs turn out to be endless.
Marco thinks the building is extremely confusing as the floors keep repeating with no door to exit.
In his fury, he warns the brothers to stay still so he can find a way to exit. He then starts
running down the stairs crossing the nine floors but is astonished to see Carlos and Oliver again.
Carlos thinks that it is the bullet that is messing with his head which is why the stairs are
looping in on him. Marco throws his keys through the stairwell which instead of falling down
returns back from above. He loses his mind and furiously asks the brothers what they
drugged him with. Oliver does not resist back and makes it clear that they have
nothing to do with this as they are also trapped. Oliver insists on removing the bullet from Carlos.
However, Carlos is scared that Oliver will end up infecting him as Carlos takes him as a little
brother who doesn’t know how to perform even the basic everyday tasks. Oliver runs to the vending
machine to fetch water and wash the wound and keeps cursing Marco for hurting his brother.
Later, Marco is seen going through his wallet and looking at his family photograph.
All of a sudden, a miniature playing card falls from his pocket which he does not recognize.
Without thinking twice, he tears the card into many pieces and throws it away.
He then gives some kind of drug to Carlos that he had on himself for
personal use so Carlos can pass out for a few hours and escape his pain.
After Carlos passes out, Marco and Oliver sit on the stairs and chat for a while.
Marco shows Oliver his family photograph and tells him that he was supposed to celebrate
his 15th wedding anniversary with his wife that night but ended up getting trapped in a stairwell.
Oliver does not show any kind of empathy and instead threatens to kill him if Carlos dies.
He then goes through his bag and takes out his belongings which include a bunch of random things.
The next day, Carlos gains consciousness but is in a terrible condition. Before dying,
he asks Oliver to enjoy and appreciate his life as it is something he could never do. As Oliver
laments Carlos' death, Marco is surprised to see that the vending machine on the stairwell has
become restocked, exactly as it was 24 hours ago. Seeing Marco’s insensitivity in this situation,
Oliver fumes with anger and points Marco’s gun at him, threatening to kill him. Marco tries to
knock some sense into Oliver and assures him that he did not intentionally fire Carlos. Moreover,
he makes Oliver realize that he is losing his mind as it is a symptom of losing his loved one.
The scene cuts to a bickering family having their family time.
Among them is a young girl Camila playing a game with her stepfather, Roberto. Camila’s brother,
Daniel does not seem to have a nice relationship with his stepfather and is very quiet and distant.
They are planning to take a road trip for which Daniel is seen packing his stuff among which
he packs a deck of miniature playing cards, just like the one Marco found in his wallet.
Sandra is the mother of Daniel and Camila, and they are preparing to take a six-hour-long road
trip to meet their biological father, Tomas. Roberto feels apprehensive about the trip
but Sandra reassures him the long drive will give him a chance to bond with her children,
especially with Daniel. Before leaving, Sandra asks Daniel to take Camila’s inhaler
as she suffers from asthma every now and then. Just before leaving, Daniel receives a call
from Tomas and he excitedly informs him about the deck of cards that he is bringing along.
Sandra then takes the phone and offensively assures her ex-husband that Roberto has given
up drinking for five years and will be driving the car soberly. Finally, the family gets on the road,
and on their way, Roberto randomly finds a piece of green bamboo in his car,
which he cannot recognize so without paying any attention, he throws it out on the road.
On their way, while Camila is seen enjoying the journey, Daniel seems lost and dull. Roberto stops
at a gas station where he offers Camila juice despite knowing the fact that she is allergic
to sugar. Camila trusts Roberto and takes a sip from his juice. She then goes to the bathroom and
before leaving, gives her inhaler to Roberto asking him to keep it safe. When Sandra finds
out that Roberto fed Camila sugar, she freaks out and berates him for being a careless man.
They resume the journey but halfway through it, Camila slowly starts having an asthma attack.
Sandra and Roberto step out of the car to check on her and accidentally Roberto steps on Camila’s
inhaler, destroying it in the process. Sandra feels worried for her daughter and asks Roberto
to turn the car back. Roberto turns the car and all of the sudden, the four of them are startled
by the sound of a loud explosion in the distance. Sandra starts panicking and bickering that Tomas
was right about Roberto when he called him a drunk and clumsy man. Roberto keeps driving and soon
realizes that he has been repeatedly passing the same gas station and that the road keeps looping
on him. Sandra is unable to see her daughter suffering and insists on driving in hopes to find
an exit. Daniel realizes that the clock in the car shows evening time despite the sun being out.
Unable to breathe, Camila starts turning blue and Sandra feels terrible as she cannot do anything
to help her. Roberto feels ashamed to have destroyed Camila’s inhaler and keeps driving to
find an exit. However, he keeps passing the same road sign. Exasperated, he gets out of his car
and walks off through the brush to seek help. Soon, Camila stops breathing and dies due to
the absence of her inhaler. Sandra is unable to believe this and starts thinking that she is
stuck in a nightmare. She sits in the driving seat and despite not being a licensed driver
starts driving, keeps saying to herself that “this is a dream and you have to wake up.”
Seeing her completely lose her mind, Daniel picks up Camila’s body and leaves the car while Sandra
drives off rashly. He keeps walking down the road in the opposite direction, holding his sister’s
body. All of a sudden, Sandra meets them at the same point and is devastated to know that they
are trapped. She walks into a store and mourns over her fate. On the other hand, Daniel spots
Roberto returning back from the bushes, and all of them give up all their hopes of escaping.
The scene transitions back to the group that was trapped in the stairwell. Through Marco
and Oliver’s messages written on the walls of the stairwell, it becomes clear that thirty-five years
have passed since the incident and both of them are still trapped in the same location. Each day,
they find a fresh copy of all their belongings. Both Marco and Oliver have turned into old men
surviving on the food from the vending machine that restocks every 24 hours. Over the decades,
these items gather into towering piles as the duo attempt to live their repetitive lives.
Marco has turned weak and is unable to climb the stairs so he drags himself on the stairs
to get a hold of whatever he wants. Meanwhile, Oliver keeps himself fit through regular exercise
in the stairwell. He even made a shower for himself using punctured plastic water bottles
and using nail cutters to trim his hair and mustache. With the overload of everything,
Oliver makes sure to keep things organized every day, such as placing his backpack, money,
nail cutter, clothes, headphones, book, and many more things in their respective piles.
Oliver leads Marco in rituals worshiping Carlos's skeleton to keep him busy. Marco is
seen remembering his daughters and calculating their ages with Oliver. All of a sudden,
the scene cuts to the same escalator that was shown at the start of the film with the same
old lady handing a rat to someone passing by. The scene then cuts to the endless road where
the bickering family was trapped. There is trash all along the road which also kept multiplying
day after day for thirty-five years. Daniel, who is now a grown-up, lives self-reliantly, secluded
from Roberto and Sandra. He has now accumulated a stash of Camila’s inhalers and piled them on top
of one another. He cooks food independently and plays with his deck of cards alone.
Meanwhile, in the middle of the night, Marco has an epiphany and calls Oliver to explain to him
that he in reality is Daniel and that none of this is real, but instead an alternate version of their
real lives. On the other hand, Sandra dies and Roberto buries her. All of a sudden, Roberto and
Marco’s heads start pounding and they are struck by clarity. Roberto explains that he is about to
die and now understands why they are stuck there. Simultaneously, Roberto reveals to Daniel,
and Marco reveals to Oliver that nothing that has happened is real. Marco reveals that he actually
is Daniel, the 10-year-old boy from the incident of the endless road whereas Roberto elucidates to
Daniel that when he was a 10-year-old boy, he was stuck on a green bamboo raft for thirty-five years
after the instructor met with an accident. Roberto urges Daniel to note down whatever
he is saying as he will forget it just the way he himself forgot when he was told about it.
Both Marco and Roberto emphasize the fact that only physical movement is not vital
but emotional movement is important too and that a human sacrifice is required to initiate
this repetitive incident thus explaining the cycle of incidents and new dimensions.
Both the elderly men explain that younger people who get stuck in a time loop come out better
than older people because they enjoy their time as compared to older people. Moreover, younger people
in real life have more contentment and affluence than older people who experience more sadness and
bad luck. As Marco and Roberto explain Oliver and Daniel respectively, snippets of their real lives
are shown portraying their good and bad times. Before taking his last breath, Roberto requests
Daniel not to enter the car so that he can break the cycle of creating new dimensions. Marco,
on the other hand, requests Oliver not to enter the elevator so that he can also break the cycle.
As Marco and Roberto die, they leave a small red diary for Oliver and Daniel. Daniel buries Roberto
and starts walking on the road. He finds a police car parked in the middle of the road and after
looking inside it, he walks away. However, after taking his belongings, he enters the police car
following his fate against Roberto’s advice. Meanwhile, Oliver initially tries to kill himself
but ultimately enters the elevator to leave the apartment building going against Marco’s advice.
Daniel becomes Marco and heads out to arrest Carlos and Oliver after he reads the red diary. On
the other hand, Oliver becomes the Russian bellhop named Karl who is an elevator operator. Glimpses
of Marco, Oliver, and Daniel’s lives are shown including their positive and negative incidents.
While Marco is off to arrest Oliver and Carlos, Karl operates the elevator for the two newlyweds.
As the newlyweds arrive on their hotel floor, Karl brings a bee that stings the groom.
Suddenly, the three of them are startled to hear a loud explosion.
Since the groom is allergic to bee stings, he dies.
The film ends with Karl and the bride trapped in a new dimension for the next thirty-five years.
This movie has a rating of 6.3 on IMDb. I hope you all liked this video. If yes, then make sure to
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