Baja (film) (Alternity)

Baja is a 1989 American horror film based off the Ben Corrin novel of the same name. Set in the US state of Baja California in the summer-fall of 1907, in the town of Upperton on the Pacific coast, the film follows a series of disturbing events plaguing the town just as an out-of-work journalist from San Diego moves into town with his wife and three children. Baja is considered a classic of the horror genre alongside the likes of Jaws and The Exorcist and set a record for a Ben Corrin-based film, with a total domestic gross of over $425 million, and eventual international total of nearly $1 billion.

Plot
Charles Bardmann (Crispin Glover) – an out-of-work journalist from San Diego – moves his family in July 1907 to the town of Upperton, Baja California, where he takes up the job of local general store manager. A series of mysterious events rapidly escalate even as Bardmann and his family settle in, with several townspeople being brutally and mysteriously murdered by an unknown and vicious assailant who shows no mercy. Soon, other, less explainable events happen, with Upperton residents reporting the appearances of mysterious people who shouldn’t be in their homes. Though unnerved, Bardmann continues his work as manager of the local general store, and earns enough to get himself and his family by surprisingly well, while also earning him a good measure of respect among townspeople.

Unfortunately, this all comes to a shattering halt several months later when Bardmann’s youngest son, seven year-old Mark (McCaulay Culkin), strikes his head on a rock and drowns while swimming with his mother, Alice (Linda Hamilton) and older brother Simon (Edward Furlong). Mark is solemnly buried a few days later, with many of the townspeople turning out to pay their respects to the Bardmanns. Still mourning their loss, the family tries to resume their normal routine with only limited success, Mark’s death still lingering over their heads. A week later, Bardmann thinks he sees Mark on the way home from the store, but dismisses it as wishful thinking. The next morning, he wakes to a scream from his daughter Katy (Andrea Elson), to find a seemingly rabid cat under her bed, at which he grabs his old rifle and kills it. Upon burning the cat’s corpse on a bonfire in the backyard, Bardmann is visited by his neighbor, Victor Schenk (Robert Carlyle), who tells Bardmann this has happened over two dozen times in the past several years. While listening to Schenk, Bardmann thinks he sees Mark again, and points him out to Schenk – who actually sees Mark, too.

Dumbstruck, the two race after the ‘wishful hallucination’, but lose the trail in the desert on the eastern fringes of town. Out of breath, Bardmann asks Schenk: “Wishful thinking, huh? Either we’re both going crazy now, or something else is going on around here.” Later, Bardmann takes the day off work to visit old ‘Migs’ Miguel (Mel Ferrer) - a native of the region - at his home in the rundown area of town. Miguel tells both Bardmann and a late-arriving Schenk that he is part Oaxin, a Native American tribe that all but vanished centuries ago, but survived by intermarrying with arriving Spanish in the early 1700s. Miguel also claims that the town is built near a sacred Oaxin burial ground, and that with recent expansion in the region and arrival of industry, the spirits of the Oaxin, both good and evil, have been disturbed. These restless spirits and demons, Miguel says, are responsible for the mysterious happenings in Upperton.

Miguel then takes Bardmann and Schenk to the burial ground, a scrub and tree-overgrown plain just beyond the cemetery, where they see a strange man with a gaping hole in the back of his head, walking in the direction of town as if he were simply out for a stroll. Now thoroughly unnerved, Bardmann and Schenk run for town to warn them of the strange man, leaving Miguel behind in the overgrown burial grounds. They arrive in town, but the stranger is nowhere to be found, and their report of him to the police is dismissed, the investigating officers thinking the two are simply hung-over and not exhausted. Sent home by the police, Bardmann tells Schenk to get Alice, Katy, and Simon to safety and to meet him on the road north of town.

Schenk reluctantly agrees and the two split up, Bardmann returning to the burial grounds, but with Miguel gone – apparently having gone back to town as well – he hikes up a steep hill on the far side of the ground and emerges into the cemetery, not far from where they buried Mark. Bardmann then sees someone leaning over Mark’s grave with a shovel and runs at the person, tackling him to the ground and sending the shovel flying. He staggers up and drags the stranger to his feet: it’s Miguel. Bardmann then asks the old man why he was desecrating Mark’s grave by digging it up, but, Miguel tells the raging father calmly, he found the grave already open, and only brought the shovel to rebury it. That’s when Bardmann looks to the grave: heaps of dirt are strewn everywhere, the grave half-uncovered and coffin shattered. He lets Miguel go, and stunned, sifts through the dirt, only to find Mark’s body missing, now convinced of a potential grave robber, but with the mystery man from earlier still fresh on his mind. Back in town, Schenk arrives at the Bardmann home, out of breath and anxious to get the family to the meeting point. At first, Alice is startled by Schenk’s message, and refuses to leave until her husband returns, but when an earthquake suddenly strikes and the house begins to fall down around them, Alice quickly changes her mind and hustles Katy and Simon out of the house, Schenk close behind. As they race north on Main Street, chaos is unfolding, multiple buildings collapsing into heaps of rubble, sending people running in all directions in confusion and fear, separating Katy from the group. She tries to rejoin them, but is forced up a dead-end alley by a group of men, who apparently intend to trap her there. Just as the first of the men are about to grab Katy, a loud rumbling groan sounds from above them: the main smokestack from the textile factory is collapsing, and falls across the alley in a storm of bricks and mortar, choking dust clouding the air. Katy clambers across the wreckage and back onto Main Street, where she rejoins her mother and Simon, huddled inside a shattered storefront. A few minutes later, the quake stops, and Schenk reappears from behind the building, driving a truck, which the family eagerly climbs aboard and speeds north on Main Street, dodging townspeople and wreckage.

Bardmann is now making his way back to town, clouds of dust and smoke rising from the quake damage. About halfway back, Bardmann trips and hits his head on a rock, gashing it open. Staggering back up, he stumbles along the road for a time before collapsing, and just as he is about to faint from blood loss, Miguel arrives and takes Bardmann to shelter in the cellar of a half-ruined building, where he bandages the man’s wounds and treats him with the new antibiotic penicillin. At the same time, Schenk, Alice, Katy, and Simon stop for the night and a much-needed rest period. During the night, Alice suffers a nightmare about the horrifying death of her sister Mary from influenza and emaciation twenty years earlier, while Katy is visited in her dreams by a shadowy figure who warns her of an impending death. The next morning, Schenk and the group continue north, passing a battalion of National Guard, apparently alerted to the disaster that befell Upperton the previous day. The battalion arrives in Upperton hours later, to assist in clearing debris and bodies from the streets and to restore order to the town. This temporary order and peace is shattered mid-afternoon when a second, larger quake strikes and fissures begin opening up in the streets, one eventually taking the general store and police station with it. Mayor Hill meets with the battalion commander, Captain Jonathan Wick, and concedes to the captain that the town is a total loss, at which point they begin evacuating residents to the north, even as a section of the coastline begins to sink.

As the town is slowly abandoned, Bardmann and Miguel emerge from their shelter to find the streets virtually devoid of life. The remaining reluctant townspeople are finally gathered into trucks by the guardsmen and hauled away to safety, while Bardmann and Miguel split up. Miguel, to return to his house and salvage what he can, and Bardmann to search for signs of his family and Schenk's passage, if any. He finds a strip of Katy's dress snagged in the wreckage of the smokestack and digs through the bricks and crumbled mortar, only to find the gruesomely crushed bodies of the men who tried to assault her. Shocked at the carnage, but relieved that Katy apparently survived, Bardmann continues along Main Street, dodging and leaping across fissures and heaps of rubble. Miguel soon returns to his home to find it surprisingly intact and begins sifting through the place to gather together what he can. At the same time, someone makes their way through the scrub brush behind Miguel's house and silently enters through the back door. And as Miguel finishes gathering his belongings together, the eerie laugh of a child sounds from the back room, startling and unnerving Miguel greatly. He slowly makes his way to the back room - his bedroom - the laughs sounding several more times before stopping. Miguel warily enters the room, machete in hand, and stops at the bedside just as a cat suddenly drops from the rafters and onto the bed, rabidly hissing at the old man, eyes glowing white. It leaps toward him, but he quickly thrusts the machete forward into its skull, killing it and sending the body falling to the floor, blood pooling around the corpse. Miguel sighs in relief and sits on the bed to rest. Just as he stands to leave, a hand with a sharp knife reaches from under the blanket on the edge of the bed, stabbing Miguel in the Achilles and sending him crumpling to the floor in agony. As the injured Miguel inspects his wound, the blanket on the edge of the bed rises and falls aside as Mark emerges from beneath, bloodied knife in hand and horribly scarred face contorted in a snarl, crooked and bloody teeth bared. Miguel shirks back in fear as Mark brandishes the knife and advances upon Miguel, slashing the old man in the face and throat before tearing the helpless Miguel's throat out with his bare teeth, killing him.

Bardmann continues through town, barely escaping the collapse of another storefront that tumbles into the street. He leaves Main Street and makes for Miguel’s house, finding the front door open, the main room trashed and an unnatural fog clinging to the floor. Searching through the room, Bardmann then goes into Miguel’s room, where he finds the corpse of the dead cat, partly eaten, and the blanket-covered and mutilated corpse of Miguel. Bardmann now flees the house in fear, but while returning to town he falls through a fissure and into the sewage system. Shaking himself off, Bardmann sets off down the narrow tunnel and toward a light not far ahead, but soon realizes that he’s not alone. Racing to the exit, Bardmann emerges into a drainage ditch on the south side of town and stops to wait for his pursuer, a sharp metal rod at the ready. The pursuer emerges from the sewer and looks around wildly for Bardmann, who can clearly see a gaping hole in the man’s chest, finally realizing Miguel was truly right. With all his might, Bardmann runs at the undead man and drives the rod through his head, pinning him to the bottom of the drainage ditch, despite a fierce struggling. Satisfied, Bardmann runs along the waterfront and toward the wharf, laughing - a clear sign of a mental breakdown. A few minutes later, he reaches the wharf and seeks refuge in the warehouse, but again flees outside when another quake strikes and levels the building. The quake also dislodges and partly ruptures an oil storage tank, which starts leaking onto the wharf. Staggering to his feet and choking on dust from the collapse, Bardmann looks up to see Mark standing not ten feet in front of him, holding both the knife and Miguel’s machete, both covered in dried blood. He advances to within five feet of Mark, who starts taunting him about the mistake that got him fired from the San Diego Sun – the death of his co-worker Leah Johns in an accidental shooting by police: something he never told Mark about. Bardmann asks Mark what happened to him, to which the boy replies in a rasping, water-choked and almost inhuman voice, “Dad – I’m back, it’s okay.” Bardmann then shudders before confessing that Miguel had told him about the power of the burial ground a month or so before the boy’s death, and that he had him buried at the edge of the cemetery purposely, hoping to return him to life. At the mention of the word ‘life’ Mark drops the machete and races at Bardmann, growling fiercely and screeching, at which point a struggle ensues, Mark slashing at his father’s arm with the knife, cutting it deeply and bloodying the older man badly.

To the north of town, on the coastal road leading to the smaller town of Lucaston, Schenk and the rest of the Bardmanns arrive at the meeting point, but with no sign of the elder Bardmann present, the group decides to seek refuge in an abandoned mine just off the road. There they find something terrifying and totally unexpected, a half-dozen undead – just like Mark – including Schenk’s wife Natalie and the stranger he and Bardmann saw at the burial ground the previous day, as well as several boxes’ worth of dynamite, which they quickly load into the truck and flee north with. Back at the Upperton wharf, the undead Mark appears to have gained the advantage against the elder Bardmann, who is badly cut and bleeding profusely. Just as the undead boy moves in to kill Bardmann, a sudden quake throws him off balance and into the pool of oil leaked by the storage tank, soaking him in the dark liquid. Angered, Mark stands to his feet, knife still in hand and sees Charles standing to his feet as well, steadily gripping the machete, and in a final burst of rage and adrenaline, charges the boy, stabbing him through the chest with the machete blade. Bardmann then collapses to the ground atop the oil slick, too, near a rusted old ship anchor. Mark advances and closes in, swinging the knife wildly, and jerking the machete from his chest, but inadvertently makes contact with the anchor, throwing off a spark that sets fire to the oil around them. The undead boy screams in agony and defeat as the most powerful tremor yet sends the wharf and much of the waterfront collapsing into the ocean, setting the oil slick afloat. Mark’s undead form wrenches and twists as he hears a weak laugh sounding from Charles, who is very nearly dead himself. The dancing sea of fire consumes Charles, and soon, his former son as well, whose body finally sinks below the surface, eyes blinking one last time and growing still as he dies - finally at rest. Above the water's surface, a shimmering black vapor mixes with the smoke from the fire and crawls slowly skyward, disappearing amidst the slowly growing cloud of haze.

Back on the coastal road, Schenk and the rest of the Bardmann family cross the bridge over the Lucaston Gorge, a platoon of guardsman are waiting on the far side to round up any stragglers. At first skeptical of the group's story, the guardsmen are soon convinced when one of the undead charges at them from across the bridge, the same man Schenk and Bardmann saw the previous day. He is quickly cut down, literally shredded by a fusillade of bullets from the guardsmen, who now readily take charge of dynamiting the bridge. As the guardsmen are finished securing the first few of the charges, another undead man appears around the bend in the road to the south, running full tilt toward them. Just as the man reaches the far side of the bridge and the guardsmen prepare to open fire, a flaming object arcs through the air high above and crashes into his head. He then bursts into flames - a firebomb. The guardsmen turn to see Simon standing beside a case of whiskey found in the truck, another of the bombs already lit. The second impacts at the undead man's feet, further consuming him with flame and sending him writhing to the ground, inhumanly screaming in agony as he finally dies. Schenk offers his help in setting the charges, an offer the tired guardsmen readily accept, and they finish minutes later. He then volunteers to stay behind and light the charges, but the guardsmen refuse, saying they don't want to risk any more civilian deaths, at which Schenk tells them it was partly his own ignorance of the Oaxin burial ground that created their current situation and that may have been why Mark died in the first place. The platoon leader reluctantly agrees after hearing the Bardmanns' reaction to Schenk's revelation.

Minutes later, as Schenk prepares to light off the charges, another three undead people come running up the road toward the bridge, one of them Schenk's wife Natalie. The guardsmen, forced to look on helplessly for fear of gunning Schenk down, watch as he throws the first of the undead trio off the bridge, sending the man plummeting to the sharp rocks of the gorge far below. After a quick fight with the second attacker, Schenk bashes his face in with a rifle butt and fires into the man's head repeatedly, goring and killing him. But as Natalie approaches, Schenk hesitates and drops the rifle, attempting to reason with his former wife, who tries to convince him that she is still alive. But knowing far better to the contrary, Schenk lights off the tandem fuse, at which the undead Natalie goes into a rage and attacks her former husband, wounding him and attempting to put out the fuse. Schenk removes a knife from his belt and stabs Natalie in the leg, at which she howls in pain and focuses fully on her attacker, ignoring the fuse, even as it burns down. Schenk then looks into Natalie's eyes and says "I'm sorry" just as the fuse burns off and the charges detonate, incinerating the Schenks in a split second and tearing the bridge apart, sending the twisted wreckage plummeting into the gorge below. As the smoke clears, the Bardmanns return to the truck and prepare to leave, which is when Katy finds a note pinned under the passenger seat: it's from Schenk, asking the family to forgive him for his mistakes, and to find his twelve year-old son Kyle in San Diego. Simon now stares off at the ocean and spots a dark, silhouetted figure to the side of the road far ahead, whom Katy spots, too. They look at each other in bewilderment and shudder nervously as they hear an eerie whispering voice tell them "It's not over yet."

Back in the burial ground, the earth stirs and a pile of worn ceremonial rocks fall aside as yet another undead corpse - now of an imposing Native American (possibly Oaxin) - rises from his grave, a long-bladed knife in hand, moaning as dirt spills from his mouth.

Cast

 * Crispin Glover as Charles Bardmann
 * Linda Hamilton as Alice Bardmann
 * Robert Carlyle as Victor Schenk
 * McCaulay Culkin as Mark Bardmann
 * Andrea Elson as Katy Bardmann
 * Edward Furlong as Simon Bardmann II
 * Mel Ferrer as Miguel

Sequel
In the summer of 1995, Paramount finally confirmed rumors of a sequel to the hit film, titled Baja II, set in February 1942, thirty-five years after the events of the first movie. It was released to theaters on April 25, 1997, and has so far grossed around $400 million domestically.