Director: Sonia Escalonia
Year: 2018
Country: Spain
Alternate Titles: Casa de Sudor y Lágrimas
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Living with her commune members, a young woman who is continually plagued by strange and disturbing dreams about a prophetic visitor that disrupts the community finds those dreams coming true and tries to prevent the other cult-members from devolving into madness.
Review:
This was a fine if somewhat problematic effort. Most of the enjoyable aspects here is the film's approach to the day-to-day lives of the members involved with the cult. Their traditions and general way of life, living in a seemingly underground bunker with elaborate Gothic-lined candles, dressed all in white and featuring plenty of overt religious iconography from the idea of the one figure controlling them in a position of power and influence all gives off a rather intriguing affair. Even the idea of wearing expressionless masks and being driven around in marked cars when leaving the compound offer up that kind of interesting dynamic with the cult and it's regulations. Alongside the nice gore shots included here for the few kills, there's not much else for this one as it does have a few major problems.
The biggest issue with the film is the fact that it's just deathly dull and boring. It's nearly impossible to care at all about the exploits of the cult and it's members when it's so dragged out and completely unwilling to go for any kind of faster pacing to simply speed this along further, resulting in over-long sequences that are so bland and uninteresting that the film feels far longer than it's already rather long running time. Seeing how long it takes to get through their routines, traditions and preparations doesn't really offer up much of anything interesting, and by doing this ends up pushing the horror out of this one to the point that the fact it's about a cult is really the only piece of genre involvement throughout here. The film never maintains even the slightest hint of genre hallmarks due to this and is really weak as a whole in the first place which is what holds it back the most.
Overview: */5
A barely there horror film that generates it's only enjoyable elements from it's technical competency, there's not much to really get into this one beyond the religious banter. See this only if you're into dragged-out, religious-heavy dramas with a few minor horror leanings, but if you want a traditional horror film heed caution and seek other efforts elsewhere.
This ran as part of our series of reviews on the 2018 Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
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