Bajo la sal (2008)

In Santa Rosa de la Sal, a town closely tied to a gigantic saltworks, women’s bodies begin turning up in the salt marshes. Salazar, the local police chief, is horrified and asks the capital for help. His former colleague, Commander Trujillo, arrives from the capital. Rather than coming on an official mission, he is there because he was dismissed from his job in the capital and is under investigation over a workplace incident, presumably negligence that cost one or more of his colleagues their lives. Together, with help from the saltworks’ doctor, they go to the funeral home to perform an autopsy on one of the bodies. There they meet Víctor, the establishment owner’s son. He is withdrawn and attends the local school, where he often gets into trouble for misbehavior; he also likes making homemade animated horror films. Víctor is in love with Isabel, a waitress at the local café, El Figón de Sal. As Trujillo and Salazar make progress in the investigation, they meet other people in town, including Principal Domínguez, who runs the region’s only high school. All of the missing young women have one thing in common: they attended that school. Trujillo asks Domínguez for the records of the deceased students, but they are unavailable because they were lost in a fire some years earlier. Víctor has a stroke of luck when he runs into Isabel at the wake for her friend Brenda, another of the missing young women. After they meet, Víctor decides to visit Isabel, but he arrives late and sees her getting into a taxi. He follows it to El Cielo, a brothel outside town where Brenda used to work. Víctor goes to Isabel’s house and asks her to stop working at El Cielo, but she tells him she is leaving for the capital the next day. They are suddenly attacked by an indistinct figure and kidnapped, then taken to an abandoned warehouse. Trujillo, who has already been summoned by the authorities in the capital, notices that Víctor is missing from the funeral home. He goes into Víctor’s room and realizes that he has kept newspaper clippings about the missing young women, photographs of the bodies from the funeral home, and has an interest in horror films—all things that lead Trujillo to believe Víctor is involved in the murders. Eventually, Trujillo finds Salazar dead at the high school. Putting the pieces together, he discovers who the killer is. He finds the abandoned warehouse, where Domínguez has already killed Isabel and is torturing Víctor to make him confess what he has told the police about Domínguez. When Trujillo arrives, Domínguez shoots him, but Domínguez in turn falls victim to Trujillo. They both die, and the police arrive to rescue Víctor. Some time later, Víctor visits Isabel’s grave before leaving Santa Rosa de la Sal with his father. (The scene showing Víctor packing his things to leave was cut from the film and is included on the DVD.)