SPANISH FILM FESTIVAL: The fact this horror-cum-thriller was produced by Guillermo del Toro creates certain expectations. We might expect, for example, that even if it doesn’t live up the striking originality of del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth or The Devil’s Backbone, it might at least take us on an unexpected journey; show evidence of a cinematic imagination writ large. These expectations are sadly never met.
Even more disappointingly, this becomes clear from the strange opening scene onwards. And I mean 'strange’ not in a good, i.e. bone-chilling way, but in a 'does this director really know what he’s trying to achieve here?’ way. We’re introduced to a blind brunette (Belen Rueda) alone in a large house, preparing to hang herself in the basement but changing her mind when she senses a stranger in the room – though the audience can see no evidence of this. At this point she panics and accidentally hangs herself, as I suppose one does.
Two peculiar elements: all this is happening at night during a violent thunderstorm, with bright flashes of lightning competing with the bright red 'cliché alert!’ light bulbs going off inside the viewer’s head. And jazz crooner Diana Krall’s ultra-smooth version of 'The Look of Love' seems to be playing somewhere in the house. That the choice of tune turns out to be significant in the plot doesn’t detract from its peculiarity at the time, even if it does makes a change to the usual Penderecki-inspired atonal orchestral music of your standard horror feature.
A third strange element: in what appears to be some kind of public event at a planetarium (never explained), a blonde also played by Rueda, clutches her eyes and falls to the ground having some kind of fit. That’s the Julia of the title. It turns out she’s the dead woman’s twin sister, picking up spooky signals of her sibling’s demise via the psychic antennae they shared, or something. She also turns out to be going blind. So I guess the eyes are the psychic antenna. Two sisters who are totally or partially blind? Well, they are twins. I guess that happens all the time. Genetic inheritance. Don’t you know anything? Hey, give the film a chance!
Well, I tried. In truth, there’s little that’s more dispiriting than sitting through a film that starts with such a screaming lack of credibility. In theory the film may improve as it proceeds. This one doesn’t.
Director Guillem Morales and his writing partner Oriol Paulo thread a series of tired old horror tropes around a mystery plot in which Julia sets out to find the identity of the mystery man she believes is responsible for her sister’s death. Why is she so convinced? Because that Diana Krall disc was found on the stereo when the police arrived, and sis just hated that song! A mystery man must have put it on just to torment her!
No prizes for guessing that the corpses will quickly start piling up. Nor that Julia will suffer frequent nightmares, punctuated, naturally, by thunder and lightning. Or that creepy music will alternate with sudden orchestral blaring. Or a woman with 'devil’ contact lenses will appear, unremarked upon. Or that female characters will keep on descending into spooky basements as if they’ve never seen a horror movie before.
Still, I’m going to be generous and give this one and a half stars. For the cinematography.
