I just watched this, it feels like most of the other "new wave" Spanish chillers I've seen. Full of promise only to unravel due to too much
slightly unfocused plot piling up as the runtime wears on. In the end you feel a bit cheated and underwhelmed, despite the elements the film gets right. Especially after the triple climatic twists that feels like the film is
way over compensating. The first twist is great, and could have made the film at least a minor classic with small story adjustments. The two that follow the first are so lurching and "left field" it makes you to slap the director in the face. Perhaps I missed the meanings behind the last two, but I shouldn't need a damn field guide. One felt like was pandering to the idiots in the audience who wanted what the film seemed to pointing towards and the other was a giant mindfuck that pandered to the "experts" that can write endlessly about their concept of its significance. It felt like three alternate endings chopped into one.
The three twists I'm referring to:
1)
Spoiler (Highlight or Triple Click to Read):| Simon actually playing a game and dying in the process unbeknown to his parents, being the source of the mysterious noises. |
(shut the movie off after this, would have made a great, albeit one-note ending)
2)
Spoiler (Highlight or Triple Click to Read):| The lighthouse bullshit, the children becoming "alive", Simon coming back from the dead, and Laura becoming their caregiver. |
(Blah, this is absolute shit, should have had the director walk into the shot with a sign in all caps
"YOU CAN CRY NOW, THIS IS THE BITTERSWEET EMOTIONAL MEANING")
3)
Spoiler (Highlight or Triple Click to Read):| Laura, Simon, and the children suddenly all being dead in the next scene then the film ends. |
(WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Really after all this I expected Mel Brooks to be seen springing up from a dream and breaking out into song about deformed children and door knobs as the credits roll. This would have made the same amount of sense.
The whole thing is sorta like a mish-mash of Balagueró's
The Nameless (missing/phantom children, grieving mother as the central character),
Darkness (mysterious, foreboding wood mansion of a home), and
Frágiles (more mystery involving ailing children w/ a woman at the center). Guillermo del Toro's
The Devil's Backbone seems to be all that was necessary, as it stands
far above any of these.
It makes me wonder if Horror "fans" are so hard up for substance in the genre they'll take something "resembling" quality, but be blind to the whole thing being a mere facade of a hollow center stuffed with dry horseshit...