25/16
A tense, terrifying, melancholic, suffocating fantasy thriller with hints of a ghost story
Plot
Follows young girl Emma on her journey to learn to communicate with the spirit of a girl, Uxoa, who has been trapped in a hermitage for centuries, so she tries to convince Carol, a skeptical medium, to help her. A supernatural thriller filled with scary action, chills, thrills and plenty of jump scares; However, some confusing and inexplicable, the reason for some disturbing events is never well explained. The film portrays a fictional history of social reality plaguing a small town. It opens with an apparent historical prologue involving the plague, a chapel where the sick were locked up and a regiment of beaked birdmen, but this turns out to be a recreation of a pageant as part of a small town’s annual festival, when the chapel thought to be haunted by little Usoa has been briefly opened.
A tense and mysterious film full of emotion, suspense, chills, red herrings, disturbing twists
It follows the little girl Emma (Maia Zaitegi) on her journey to learn to communicate with the spirit of a girl, Uxoa, who has been trapped in a hermitage for centuries, so she tries to convince Carol (Belén Rueda), a skeptical and fake medium, to help her. The latter is literally scarred from a childhood in which her mother, perhaps a real medium, seemed more interested in a ghost of a local girl than in her own daughter. This is a passable and acceptable film with many protagonists who are not always sympathetic, deeply human and relatable. This is a haunted film that contains an uneasy horror and a sinister atmosphere when the menacing beings appear.
It deflates as the shooting progresses and prevents us from talking about a gem like “Cerdita”
Step by step the mystery begins to unfold until its surprising finale, resulting in a sentimental ghost story with serious and dark tones in the manner of “The Orphanage” or “Pan’s Labyrinth”, but with its distinctive female focus. It is an attractive drama whose interest wanes as the effective excess of its tedious accumulation of supposedly terrifying elements increases. While “Cerdita” focuses on pure terror in “La Ermita”, there are several things that confirm Pereda as a key figure in the current horror and fantasy genre. One is his frontal entry into genre cinema: he bets on fantasy without hesitation, adding a bit of personal drama.
It turns out to be a decent and adequate film, but not noteworthy
However, Pereda manages to make a more than worthy film but inferior to the previous one. Pereda has an eye for the gothic, savoring the trappings of Spanish horror without making a real horror film. Starring Belén Rueda who gives a good performance in her usual style, she is an actress experienced in thrillers and horror films, such as: Julia’s eyes, The orphanage, No dormirás, Durante la tormenta, The Pact, Orbita 9 and The body. In fact, Belén Rueda is the closest thing Spain has to a horror heroine, or a “Scream Queen”, she is well matched with the child prodigy Maia Zaitegi who evokes the young Ana Torrent in Cria Cuervos or El espiritu de la colmena (Spirit of the Beehive).
The film was professionally directed by Carlota Pereda who is clearly a talented writer and director
As a female drama with tones akin to the genre, it is the second solid card of presentation for Pereda’s talent. Won 2023: Sitges Film Festival: Official Feature Film Section (out of competition) and 2023: Goya Awards (Spain): Nominated for Best Visual Effects. Her first film was the much better ¨Cerdita¨ which takes as a starting point the Goya winner for Best Short Film of the same name by Carlota Pereda herself, winner of the Goya for Best Short Film in 2018 and also starring Laura Galán. Rating: 5.5/10.
