Guardián de las Animas (Guardian of the Souls) aka Soul Walker (2011) Mexico
When I read the premise that this was another 'a man wakes in a hospital bed and has no idea who he is and only has...' I just about deleted it right off. Fortunately the premise was a bit off and the story was a smidgen better than that. Soul Walker is about a man who wakes in a hospital bed (that part was right) - his name is Xolotl (No close captioning so as close as I could tell it's kind of like 'Solotol') and he can see things that aren't there. Yes, this is a paranormal type movie.
He does have some memory loss but most of it he remembers - and needs his camera. See, he mainly can visualize spirits with his camera - he's even known as Xolotl: The Ghost Hunter so he's made a buck or two off this little ability of his.
Xolotl was the Aztec god of fire and lighting, sickness and deformities. He was the twin of Quetzalcoatl, the pair being sons of the virgin Coatlicue, and was the dark personification of Venus, the evening star. He guarded the sun when it went through the underworld at night. He also assisted Quetzalcoatl in bringing humankind and fire from the underworld.
What has that to do with the movie? Mostly nothing - but they do try to bring basic Aztec mythology into the story - it just didn't really mesh 'cause this is pretty simply a slasher movie with paranormal overtones. Not much room for religion in here. And being translated into English certain things kind of get... muddled.
I do know they've got the good cop/bad cop routine down pat - way down pat. The good cop practically puts Xolotl on his knee while the bad cop beats the hell out of him and wants him dead. As the story goes on we find that women (and men) have been disappearing, only to reappear dead without their hearts. Oh gee, an Aztec theme about murdered people with missing hearts? How original.
Xolotl starts to realize that now he is seeing 'spirits' whether he has his camera or not. And they're getting more insistent on being heard. They offer a medical reason for his 'visions' - he has inoperable brain cancer. Huh. Okay. So now it's a mystery that he has a limited time to solve since he's dying and the killer knows he's after him.
It's not terribly shocking to find out that the reason the 'bad cop' was so brutal was that one of the girls found was his lover and when he finds that Xolotl is really trying to help his attitude changes. Not soon enough though - because the killer is actually... say it with me... SAY. IT.
All is revealed when through vision the dead tell Xolotl who is behind their murder but it's too late - the murderer has him tied up and is going to eat his heart. But then they get into something like oh, he cut Xolotl open against his will so according to Aztec lore he gets all the bad stuff from him and dies. Convenient. Oh yeah, in case you didn't say it like a good little detective, it was the 'good cop' all along. Duh.
The spirits are satisfied, Xolotl is dead and the movie is over.
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