Peliculas Para No Dormir. 6 Films to Keep You Awake DVD review. P 1.
We have talked a little about the Spanish TV series 6 Films to Keep You Awake in the past but we have heard little about the actual films themselves even though they came out on English friendly DVD some time ago.
The 6, hour long films were directed by a group of prominent Spanish horror directors, some more known than others internationally, and was produced by studio powerhouse Filmax.
Today I got my DVD box set in the mail, from xploitedcinema.com and promptly sat down to watch the first two, directed by the biggest names of the bunch, Alex De La Iglesias (Day of the Beast and the upcoming The Oxford Murders) and Jaume Balaguero (The Darkness and the much loved REC.) Two films with similar settings but very different stories. The set includes a trailer, on set footage and a making of for every film. The films are all subtitled but none of the extras are unfortunately.
Over the next few days I'll try to get these films reviewed in the order they are in the box set so I won't play favorites and start with the directors I know.
First up is Alex De La Iglesias´s La habitación del niño (The Baby's Room), followed by Balaguero's Para Entrar A Vivir (To Let).
Read on friends.
La habitación del niño
Juan and Sonia have just moved in to a "new" house. A big sucker that has some spooky history, as is evident by the opening sequence where a small boy is pulled down a small puddle on the floor in one of the rooms of the afore mentioned house.
The couple have a brand spanking new baby and are seemingly very happy until a relative gives them a baby monitor one day and the couple start hearing some strange noise in the baby's room during the night. Thinking that the baby monitor was broken Juan buys a new model, a infrared camera that's hooked up to a small TV. The couple fall a sleep that night watching their baby on TV but when the father wakes up in the middle of the night he sees a stranger standing over the crib and that's about the time he basically loses it. Estranging his wife, who is seemingly unaware of the strange visitor, and his co workers Juan goes on a downward spiral of paranoia and fear for his family. When he hooks up with a hack paranormal expert he might find the answer to his problems and how to get his family get together.
I've been worried about De La Iglesias lately. His films are not as good as they used to be and it seems like he's pretty much lost interest in the horror genre and wants to do more comedy or straight thrillers. He handles this material pretty well though. The story plays out like a long Twilight Zone episode where you pretty much know how it is going to end but he saves it with pretty effective photography and creepy visuals, especially in the infrared camera. It plays more on the paranoia of the main character rather than gore or violence but when that happens it's pretty brutal in its simplicity. The film also benefits from strong performances from the leading actors, especially Javier Gutiérrez who plays Juan very convincingly.
It's a pretty straight forward ghost story, nothing that we haven't seen before but keeps you interested all the way through.
Para Entrar A Vivir
In Balaguero's story To Let we follow a young couple and parents to be, Clara and Mario, to an apartment they are hoping to rent. The size and the price are just right but the placement seem a bit out of the way. Clara hates the place from the get go but Mario asks her to give it a chance. They are shown the apartment by a friendly landlady but something is off about the whole thing. First the whole building seems abandoned, even though cries of a child can be heard through the walls and that the landlady saying that renovations are being done, and the place is littered with old mannequins...and Mario's old shoes and pictures of Clara and him taken from afar. That's odd. It seems that the friendly landlady isn't that friendly and is hellbent on filling the apartment building with fresh new couples, wether they like it or not.
This film packs more punches than the two seasons of Masters of Horror combined. When the shit hits the fan it keeps on hitting you in the face with foul smelling fecal matter until the credits role. Well that might be overstating it a little and in a rather crude matter but what I'm trying to say is that it keeps you on the edge of your seat the whole time. For such a simple story, a couple trying to get out of an apartment building, Balaguero fills it with fantastic tension, superb performances and incredible camera work. It's not surprising that this film was screened as a part of the Venice Film Festival in 2006. It's that good. It's also gruesome, bloody and violent as hell. Macarena Gómez as Clara is nothing short of fantastic, portraying a character that's scared shitless but also has a sense of survival. Adrià Collado as Mario, a good looking leading man, plays against type as sort of useless hero who gets the shit kicked out of him more than he can help out. But the stand out is Nuria González as the landlady who is as crazy as a brick shit house and pretty ruthless for an middle aged woman. I guess they come in all shapes and sizes.
Now I have to confess that I have never seen a feature film by jaume Balaguero (The Darkness got pretty poor reviews and I haven' really been keeping taps on him since) but if they are anything like this particular episode than color me excited to see more.
