Santo (2022– ) User Reviews

Hard to follow, strange visual affects

[OneAnjel · 5/10 · 17 September 2022]

I came to the reviews hoping that someone else had made sense of this. But with only three reviews I'm out of luck. I'm halfway through episode 2 and I have no idea what's going on. All I can say is the characters seem interesting, the dubbing is actually very good considering it's Netflix, the atmosphere is consistently drab and unappealing. The story is so convoluted jumping around so much you don't know who's who, who's the good guy, who's the bad guy, why this guy was in the gutter, did they find the boy? But right away I think I know who Santo is, so I'm probably not going to finish watching this. Oh and there's some weird visual effects where it's almost like they tried to do some sort of a Blair Witch fx but different. At first it's interesting but it has no purpose in other words it doesn't come right before something or right after something it's just kind of random. It would be like having a musical crescendo despite that nothing happened.

I have NO idea what this is about

[boydpeters · 5/10 · 2 February 2023]

It makes no sense.

I'm currently in the second episode and I have no idea who half the characters are all what is going on it seems to be well filmed and maybe well acted but I've got no idea are there two bearded men or three bearded men is the Twist to the bad guys I don't know who the women are wasn't his girlfriend or wife who I thought lived in another country killed and now she's alive I have absolutely no idea what's going on

Somehow we go from the end of episode 1 and he's in a hole in the ground in episode 2 in another country I assume they're gonna do filling some gaps in future episodes but I just have no idea what country which actor is in and who they are.

Decent but not great

[jbwatson-36466 · 4/10 · 11 January 2023]

Great action but no plot or background or character development and not great acting. Just disjointed action Half the lines said are questions in response to questions. So the dialogue goes no where. It bounces back and forth between the two cops. Hard to tell what is going on. Even the lines written are poor quality. You can't even figure out who the bad guys are. Just a bunch of random non-cops getting gunned down. An undercover action gets called off only to have the cops kill in cold blood the surrendering bad guy and try to murder the undercover cop. What?!?! Just makes no sense. There is some decent scenery. We're just told there is some brutal Santo named bad guy known on both sides of the Atlantic. Cops say, It was Santo, with no explanation for how they know. There is no evidence led investigation. Just random attacks and shooting. Zero plot. Zero sense. Just random violence that makes no sense. It is one of the most poorly written shows I've seen anywhere. I should probably have given it a 2/10. I kept waiting for it to make sense and develop. It never did. Very disappointing.

A Convoluted Mess

[deager · 3/10 · 17 September 2022]

This mess of six episodes held promise for two episodes and then the train got so derailed that the wreck that followed could never be put back together again. First the positives, why there are 3 stars, direction was decent, acting ok, photography above average, acting good, dubbing decent. Now the other side, editing was so bad you couldn't keep up half the time, they constantly replayed scenes and finally you got that perhaps the character was dreaming them (?) or did they just need filler, or...your guess is as good as any. The title character of ultimate evil, when revealed was a bit anti-climatic, you probably figured it out and the character really did not fit into the supposed history of the Santo legend, unless...and I wont give that away if you waste 6 hours watching it you will see what I mean. Also, we have plot lines hanging, new ones rising, all to add weight to a story that already can't carry the burden. We have our two male leads having the opportunity to do the right thing and just staring into space as the moment slips by. People acting as no reasonable person would except in a screenwriters brain. Sorry, this series is just bad in so many, many ways and then they throw in the stupidest cliff hanger at the end to try to hook you into another season!!!! Wow, the gaul! Skip this one, I suffered through it for you!

Terribly told story. SKIP.

[ACA13 · 1/10 · 17 September 2022]

Terribly told story. SKIP.

Very confusing between different time lines. There is not really a story, a bunch of evil cult stuff.

Nothing new but confusing.

It is not clear what is the police doing or whether the police from Spain ans Brazil are working together or not.

The twist at the end was predictable to me. How didn't get the behaviour of the two main police officers.

Do not waste your time, I started watching thinking it is based on a true story but around episode four, realized, it wasn't and made the whole series even worst and worth my time.

I stayed hoping maybe for something original but nothing. SKIP.

Another garbage by netflix

[melvinsebastian-36278 · 1/10 · 18 September 2022]

Show is overstretched to 6 episodes for nothing for a garbage story. There is nothing in it. SKIP IT, DONT WATCH..... the ending is a joke and you will go mad. The story is non-linear, they show past scenes in between so many times and you will assume that something next level is going to come. But nothing good will ever happen, it's just the scenes are repeated. The ending is pathetic and you will feel that you wasted around valuable hours. What kind of heroes are these, clueless and stupid. I mean what were the writers thinking? Write some garbage and people will accept? In the end you will feel that one of the heroes is the most stupid person alive on planet. There is no justice in this story. If you looking for a severly bad show to laugh thinking about the stupidity of netflix and the writers, here we go.

Santo is a real criminal

[mortezarocky · 7/10 · 16 September 2022]

The series is about Santo who is a drug dealer ( who is more of a real criminal ) because he is so mysterious that no one has seen his face, and at the end of the first episode, you realize that he is very cruel!

On the other hand, in this series, we have two policemen, Milan and Cardona, who are strongly opposed to each other's performance, and they must learn to work together to solve this case (to catch Santo) and take care of their lives!

As though a thriller with a crime plot featuring the trafficking of both drugs and people isn't enough, there is also the Satanic twist.

And yes, episode 1 also ends on quite the twist, so you should definitely be ready to continue. If you watch the trailer, there is also plenty there to make you want to keep watching.

The whole superstition via human sacrifice in Satanic rituals is a great addition to this being a tight crime-thriller. However, it obviously won't be for everyone due to its brutal nature. As a Spanish-Brazilian production, there is a lot of very direct imagery, so be ready for that.

Poor series not worth its time

[cm-90602 · 1/10 · 19 September 2022]

The subject of the series is appealing and the Spanish-Brazilian collaboration full of potential but the series is not worth the time. Very poor direction, with unnecessary jumps from past to present and back, from one location to anotherand back - the movie is a head-scratching mess.

There are a lot of story lines left unaddressed and numerous characters left unexplained.

The acting is decent for how chaotic the characters have been drafted. In general, it feels like the director went for shock and gory instead of dramatic coherence.

Unless you want to waste six hours of your life, don't even start it.

Nonsensical

[autexousious · 9 October 2022]

I gave it a shot because not only do I love all the countries it is set in, but the cast is generally speaking great too.

However... what a waste of talented actors. Everyone involved in this project deserved a better story, I'm not even sure how they prepared for their roles because nothing makes sense. It's impossible to follow what's going on. And as much as I love Victoria Guerra, her accent was weak and they could have easily casted a Brazilian actress instead. Unless it turns out in the end that her true nationality all along wasn't Brazilian - I wouldn't know because I just couldn't torture myself to watch the whole thing.

I'm always happy to see Portuguese/Spanish series on Netflix and wish there were more, but they need to amp up the quality and make justice to the talent they hire.

A gritty but somewhat confusing crime drama

[Tweekums · 7/10 · 5 January 2023]

This Spanish/Brazilian crime drama opens with a car driver being shot and killed and the child in the vehicle being kidnapped on a narrow Madrid backstreet. Detectives Miguel Millán and "Susi" Jackson are soon on the case. Meanwhile across the Atlantic in Brazil police officer Ernesto Cardona is going undercover to hunt a criminal known only as 'Santo'. Nobody has knowingly seen Santo's face and his followers have a religious fervour that includes disturbing rituals. Ernesto's mission ultimately takes him to Madrid where Santo is thought to be involved in the kidnapping and other crimes.

This six part series features some good gritty action and an interesting premise. Unfortunately it is also quite confusing at times as the action criss-crosses the Atlantic and includes frequent flashbacks to prior events... without always making it clear how far back we are seeing. On the plus side the acting is solid, the action is shot in an exciting way. The end of the sixth episode is clearly not the end of the story; I guess we'll have to wait another year to find out what happens next, assuming the series gets renewed.

These comments are based on watching the series in Spanish/Portuguese with English subtitles.

What Garbage!

[molimarti · 1/10 · 22 September 2022]

I just finished watching the 6 episodes and I want my time back. What garbage!!!! Bad scrip. Bad acting. Just having a bloody mess don't make a horror drama. Please don't continue. Stop right we're you left off! No chemistry with any of the actors. No way of keeping up with all the weird garbage. And what's with all the darkness? Do you think that will make a movie? This is not a movie!!! How can Netflix stoop this low? I wouldn't recommend this movie to my worse enemy. I still don't understand the Spain and Brazil connection. Actually the whole movie does not make any sense. Please don't watch!!

A Comples Noir Drama

[Pairic · 8/10 · 22 December 2022]

Santo: A Noir drama which fits into the slipstream of horror. Two detectives are pursuing Santo. A drug lord named Santo, no one knows what he looks like. He is behind occult style killings in both Brazil and Spain (as well as drug trafficking). The Brazilian cop, Cardona, manages to infiltrate Samto's organisation but is discovered. His subsequent escape to Spain with Santo's former mistress, Barbara, brings him into contact with Spanish detective Millán. Both cops are dealing with their own demons even before they are drawn into the crazed world of Santo. Extremely disturbing themes like child sacrifice dominate from the outset, some scenes of the rituals of Santo's religion remind me of the Turkish horror film Baskin. The cop on gangster on gangster on cop violence is gory and shocking. Machetes are used as often as guns. It's a compex tale with many (non-linear) flashbacks to varying timelines, the story is all there and is revealed as the narrative unfolds but you will have to pay close attention. Santo with the hold he has over his followers and even those who escape him seems more demonic than human. Created/Co=Written by Carlos López, Directed by Vicente Amorim. Six episodes on Netflix. 8/10.

Who would even consider this being watchable

[allwein · 1/10 · 22 September 2022]

Must be for the tiktok generation or something. So poorly written with mediocre acting. Save yourself the time...because this is absolutely not worth it. You keep on watching because you hope eventually there iwll be a good plot twist but it is so obvious who is Santa from the beginning. I wish I would get that bit of lifetime back.. I wonder what other series or movie this writer and director have created. This is even reason enough to cancel my netflix subscription... Another proof for pure garbage productions from netflix recently. I hated this series so much I even went out of my way to write this review.

Absolute garbage.

[wassakarra · 1/10 · 21 September 2022]

Please cancel this trash. I just finished watching all the 6 episodes from the 1st season and I must say: This is hands down the worst show I've ever watched.

The first 2 episodes are quite interesting but it just gets worse after that. The plot makes absolutely zero sense, the stories are not adequately explained, and the viewer is left to pretty much guess what the hell is going on and why? They don't even make the effort to explain a lot of the storylines.

This is trash. I should sue Netflix for wasting 6 hours of my life.

I'm still scratching my head to understand what happened at certain points of the series, and who some of the characters are.

Absolut trash

[bjornrhein · 1/10 · 25 September 2022]

It starts, someone sits in a car, someone shoots, someone are working undercover, 1 minutes, someone dont, someone smash in a door, someone sits in a car , someone shoots, someone finding a man in a tunnel,,, does it make sence ? If yes, you might like this garbage,,, absolut no explanations, things happening all the time but you have no idea why , I keep trying to believe in Netflix series , but everytime it ends up with me reaching after remote control to shut it of,, Another bad Netflix production, but this Santo serie was probably one of the worst so far, absolut garbage, so bad its insane,,,,,,

Frustrating...skip

[adamwellstead · 2/10 · 22 September 2022]

Many of the previous reviews describe this hot mess of a series. I don't want to waste any more of my time thinking about awful this eight part series is. It's too bad because the original idea was kind of interesting (namely a crossover between two countries). However, there are far too many holes in the plots. There are plot lines that don't really go anywhere and appear to be filler. The replaying the same scenes over and over again for no apparent reason is kind of strange. On top of that there is the sterotypical rouge dectective story -- he has problematic family life and goes out of his way against his superior's demands to solve the crime. It's so predictable...I could predict what episode he was going to get suspended!

Ridiculous

[laduqesa · 3/10 · 5 November 2022]

This really was a mess. It started off promisingly but then tapered down to a confusing farrago of nothing. At times, the scriptwriters clearly couldn't think of how to fill the six hours they'd been commissioned to write so they repeated scenes from earlier episodes - the fourth episode was dreary filler showing almost exactly what we'd seen before. It wasn't even done from the perspective of a different character. This pattern repeated itself on the final episodes too.

I'd worked out who Santo was by the end of episode four. It was impossible not to have done. However, even though it was obvious, it was ludicrously at odds with both what the character was meant to have been and the storyline, such as it was.

I'm the meantime, we go past inexplicable situations where people grass on each other for no reason, fail to kill baddies, go loopy and attract the cops' attention only to die, express devotion to a mythical father.

The two cops mentioned in the IMDB synopsis are mavericks, of course and ignore the law in their own ways. Both suffer for this.

The most unbelievable theme is that of voodoo/Satanism from old Dahomey being the glue that bound the drug smugglers together to the point of dying for the cause. Even the usage of psychedelics as shown couldn't have engendered the scenarios postulated here.

There's going to be a second season, gawd help us, after the predictable cliffhanger. I shan't be watching.

A total mess!

[qui_j · 1/10 · 26 September 2022]

The first episode of this series is a warning not to continue! It consists of a series of unrelated scenes that are randomly stuck together in the hope that some kind of story will emerge. The plot and subplots are all over the place, the viewer is dropped into a series of events that appear to have started even before the first episode begins. It is impossible to make any sense of the story as the editing is all over the place. There is no story continuity as it appears that no story board has been used and that maybe the teams in both countries had no idea what the other was doing. In addition, there is little dialog, but a lot of staring at other actors, objects etc! Where on earth does Netflix find this garbage?

Total wage of time.

[okesama · 1/10 · 17 October 2022]

After wasting so much of your time, plot jumping here and there, with so many unnecessary scenes, you're back on square one in the end. The story never finish. Santo, the antagonist, is actually Barbara (you'll meet her at the first episode). And right at the end, when she could have been arrested, the protagonist Cordoba, because he has been tricked to have sex with her ONCE, he stop the other protagonist from shooting her and he let her go to continue murdering and sacrificing children to drank their blood.

And with that, the the 6th (the last) episode finished.

Total waste of your time. Don't watch this, there's so many other better series than this total garbage.

from "missed potential" to blatant disrespect

[wewillmoshinhell · 2/10 · 23 March 2023]

The series has its appeal at first glance & a lot of potential for a interesting show come to mind: 2 countries, different landscapes/ sceneries, (cop-) cultures, the premise of a detective team of different backgrounds that needs to work together.

So I started out interested, somewhat sold on this idea.

And off it goes: Parts being still promising: fairly good action, somewhat thrilling atmosphere & scenery, well chosen cast.

But then it starts to stay blank in many ways:

The confusion of timelines alone is one thing (lots of people pointed this out well enough in the other comments). It's not good, but somewhat you get into this later. For me they just overdid it a little there.

But what's really bad/worse is, it just doesn't keep up with the big premise it's all mystery, darkness, confusion, but just too little of that plot make sense overall, too many desicions of the cast seem poor (if not just plain random). The "deceiving" main villain gets everything its way as if there are only brainless zombies around them. And last but not least: The protagonists never get at least one bit of cooperation or work done together: everyone just stumbles around in their own misery, achieving nothing.

(there is this one female police having at least some motivation - and relatability - but this can't save this, because this are only short climpses of hope here and there)

2/10 for the premise, but nothing more.

& oh yes, this "well, let's just do nothing" ending was the worst. All just to blatantly make it clear, there will be a second season - wich really nobody in their right mind can want after seeing this 6 episodes.

Good plotline....bad everything else

[Otte1 · 3/10 · 19 January 2023]

Skip, please skip.

Story starts on a high with a mysterious shooting and kidnapping of a child while looking for the mythical drug trafficker.

The problem?

The director. The story is pieced together with flashbacks which would not be a problem, but the story is 'flashbacking' while you are still trying to learn the characters, meaning you are watching scenes in the present and scenes in the past with no correlation. The series does this for ALL six episodes. You spend more time trying to piece together what is happening then watching the movie. This would be great if there was a payoff, but there isn't.

Plus, you have the stupidest police(again), and no one is making a good decision. By the time of the twist(which makes no sense in context of movie), you have stopped caring.

Probably could have been good...

[ellipseanostalrius · 3/10 · 25 January 2023]

If I had any idea what it's about. Maybe at some point, the director and writers thought they were being clever and then just got really drunk and said F it, let's just through all the footage on the floor and edit it back together in pieces.

The moving back and forth through time, something I've rarely appreciated, is taken to ridiculously extreme level where I just don't even care anymore. I don't care what happens to any of the character or at what time it happened. I just want to slap everyone involved with this project.

If you invested in this production, I hope you get to slap everyone involved on my behalf.

I don't recommend this to anyone except people that like to be irritated. You will be irritated.

This was crap

[JeanFlores-Dickens · 3/10 · 26 December 2022]

Okay, I don't even know where to start, this was absolutely a nightmare.

Everything was awful

The acting The story

I cannot believe a budget was approved to the this show.

The cast , speaking between the two languages, Portuguese and also in Spanish, and clearly understanding each other, shows how low the series is

The whole Brazilian voodoo and the Spanish setting do not go well together

600 characters is way too long to write a review of something atrocious "The ending" to come back to another series is atrocious

600 characters is way too long to write a review of something atrocious "The ending" to come back to another series is atrocious.

It's definitely different!

[gerardmulreaney · 5/10 · 4 January 2023]

Was very confused to begin with. The first episode is very much all over the place, it's so hard to understand. However, we persisted. All the pieces eventually fall into place, but it takes so long that most will have given up.

Some good performances by Victoria Guerra and Greta Fernández Berbel in particular. Can't really say the same for the two main male characters. Not sure the story helped them out in that regard.

The plot is pretty unbelievable, but no matter. I quite enjoy foreign movies, as they're different to the usual Hollywood happy ending stuff.

Saying all that, I sort of semi-enjoyed it.