Verónica - Movie Review

Looking for horror movies on Netflix I found a Spanish film completely unknown to me, every scene, every line of dialogue was a pleasant surprise. This motivated me to make an illustration and write my impressions.

The plot

Veronica takes us to Valencia, Spain, in the 90's. Homonymous to the title of the film, the protagonist of this story, a young teenager who shows from the first minutes as affectionate and extremely dedicated to the care of her younger brothers, Lucia, Irene and Antoñito, the latter the most adorable boy you will see this year.

Before the death of her father, she is responsible for the upbringing of her siblings to fill the gap left by her mother working all day in a bar, that emptiness throughout the film is felt and is evident when it starts to grow.

At school, Veronica and her friend Rosa have plans for the day of the solar eclipse: they got an Ouija board to have fun for a while, but what her friend does not know is that Veronica's real intention is to contact her father.

All the girls in the school look out accompanied by nuns who give them rollfilms (does anyone remember what they were?) So they can see through them the eclipse. All but three young people, they are in the basement of the school about to perform an invocation ritual.

At first, it seems to work but at the exact moment when the eclipse occurs completely, something happens. Veronica seems possessed and her friends are very scared. The table breaks and she faints.

Veronica is treated in an infirmary and not noticing anything strange, she retires to her home. It is from here that paranoia is unleashed and the fears that she felt but hid to continue helping her family.

The dilemma

With Veronica, the egg or chicken dilemma is again raised in the stories of demonic possessions. Does the trauma occur because the victim's life was already conflictive and vulnerable to ominous beings, or is the drama inherent in her life a consequence of these interventions beyond the earthly? It is rare to find cases that are portrayed as the happy family in which dysfunctions are not named.

Behind these stories there is always something else, perhaps it is the door left open by the authors so that skeptics can connect and easily associate the circumstances to mental problems, for whatever reason, the dilemma is always there.

Reality

Something very interesting about this film is that at the beginning they establish that it is inspired by real events, two cases that had a great impact on the collective unconscious of Spain.

The first, a young woman that after a session with the Ouija board in 1991, begins to hear noises, strange voices in her home. This is the case of Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro, she lived with her parents and six brothers in Vallecas, it is a very sad story because it involves the death of the young woman in a very strange and mysterious situation by photos that transcended the scene, a portrait of her that burns, and other situations that happened even after her death, paranormal events that the National Police drafted in 1992, when visiting the family home. The doctor in charge of the autopsy came to define the situation as a "sudden and suspicious" death.

The second, a case called "Embajadores" for the street where it happened, where the inhabitants of a house in Madrid were attacked at night while they slept, woke up with scratches on their shoulders. Also in the year 1991 and after a session with the Ouija board, a large family - parents, two children, the couple of one of them and their baby - lived in an apartment of 80 meters, they lived an authentic nightmare.

Conclusion

It's a very entertaining film, it has the REC filmmakers behind the camera (Paco Plaza) and it shows, every scene of suspense or terror is brilliantly executed, in spaces that are very familiar to most, they manage to shudder and worry about the characters.

The music is sensational, Héroes del Silencio is a Spanish rock band, each song is an anthem and I had the pleasure of getting to know their music through Catupecu Machu, an Argentine band that made a cover of Hechizo, a song that is part of the movie's soundtrack.

Veronica has a cast of actors that may not be completely familiar to me, this type of film depends a lot on the actors' ability to load the silences that a script has with meaning and emotion, without doubts, these actors from children to the nuns are impeccable and achieve their goal.

Worth mentioning is Verónica herself, Sandra Escacena, a beautiful and young actress who overflows with talent, this role meant a nomination for a Goya Award, a really deserved mention. From here I wish for her the beginning of a career full of successes.

Highly recommended.

Illustration process

I wanted to represent Veronica unable to see the being that haunts her, a being that carries an immense emptiness, perhaps because of the shortcomings that she feels and ends up contributing to it.