Teresa (Bárbara Colen) returns to her Northern Brazilian hometown Bacurau just in time to attend the funeral of her grandmother, Carmelita, but not before she has encountered the aftermath of a traffic accident that left behind a corpse on the road and scattered empty coffins. Later, in the crowded funeral march of the beloved and respected woman, Teresa notices water flooding out of her grandmother’s closed coffin, which is either an omen or a hallucination inspired by the psychotropic natural seeds that the townsfolk consume.

Access to sustainable water is a growing problem for the town, while the mayor of the municipality dismisses the complaints of his constituents. He offers populist promises while giving away shipments of expired processed food, old books, addictive medicine, and (again!) empty coffins. Meanwhile, the local government is more concerned about capturing Lunga (Silvio Pereira), a revolutionary admired by the people hiding somewhere up in the hills.

In just a few minutes, Bacurau introduces you to a compelling new world populated by exciting stories and characters that catch your attention immediately. Co-written and co-directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho (Aquarius) and Juliano Dornelles, this Brazilian film starts with the intertitle, “A few years from now,” which instantly hints at a sci-fi approach, which blends with magical realism, and viewers’ expectations won’t be disappointed. They will get a social and political dystopia where the epic execution keeps up with the ambitious concept at every turn.

This rural part of Brazil is no stranger to globalization as evidenced by the use of tablets and flat-screens in the local elementary school. However, a peculiar phenomenon occurs after Carmelita’s funeral procession: the town no longer appears on electronic maps, and telephones can’t find a signal. This abnormality coincides with the visit of a suspicious couple of motorbikers, the apparition of a flying saucer–shaped drone, and several unexplained brutal murders. Soon enough, the entire town discovers that they are about to face a lethal fight for survival against a siege of American hunters lead by Michael (Udo Kier). The town was apparently offered as a playing field for the intruders—and anyone can be prey.

This a place where the fantastic merges with the ordinary, intermingled with folklore, myth, and history in the same vein of other fictitious towns in Latin American literature, like Macondo in One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez and Comala in Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo. According to this tradition, Bacurau becomes a central place to develop numerous stories and supporting characters and a symbol of the country or even the continent.

To create this splendid and seductive world, the filmmakers don’t use Latin American literature as their only source of inspiration. Their film also drinks from the tradition of international and Hollywood cinema, deliberately taking ingredients from many different genres and movies: the apocalyptic science fiction of George Miller’s “Mad Max”saga, the futurist escapism of John Carpenter flicks (“Night,” a track composed by the director, is used in this film), and westerns, from Howard Hawks to Sergio Leone.

Such a mix could have produced a cool pastiche that would lead to an impeccable exercise of style, but this is not the case. The bombastic and sometimes gory violence is part of a full package that reinforces the serious treatment of its themes. By the time the hunters decide to attack Bacurau, the residents hide, making it look like a ghost town. As a result, the film brilliantly reverts and transgresses the very American tradition of a western, portraying the “outlaws” and “foreigners” as white Americans invaders.

The film finally delivers much more than it initially promises, making it impossible to guess what will happen next. Its distinct characters intensify the interest to come back again to this movie to absorb more details. (Why are there so many coffins?)

This is an innovative and fresh work to Brazilian cinema as well as the many genres that the movie digests. It’s fair to say that this is one of the best and most unique approaches to the western in recent years. Bacurau introduces us to a place and also presents new ways to reconfigure classic genres to make them look as surprising and unpredictable as they once were.