Historia de lo Oculto

History of the Occult is not a documentary or a mockumentary. This is a movie. It's not filled with possessed little girls climbing on the ceiling or evil ghosts. It's not supernatural, paranormal, or even scary... And I'm thankful. This movie is all about building suspense through a simple premise- a news station is going to expose a satanic conspiracy among the political powers of Argentina.

The movie is cryptic and deliberately vague. If you need movies spelled out for you than this isn't a movie you'll enjoy. The ending is not neatly wrapped up, you'll have to think about it afterwards to make sense of it, and that's what makes it good.

...and we liked that a lot!

Great acting, you really feel like you're watching an old TV broadcast, and the people outside that do transmit an old way of acting on movies of that era.

Good atmosphere, wasn't expecting it to look so old but relatable at the same time.

Of course, the end is a bit frustrating, but it is part of the movie, so it is somehow expected to end that way.

Hope to watch more of this director soon.

Watched at BeAfraidHorrorFestival and BAM!!!! it blowed my mind! One of the best movie of the year. if they had a bigger budget they would have done a masterpiece as The lighthouse. MUST TO WATCH if you love good cinema. <3

Saw this at the Imagine filmfestival 2021, usually in Amsterdam but now 100% online. Could not make heads or tails of it. I sat it out but had to force myself while attempting to follow what happened. For us Europeans there is not enough material to make a connection. An introduction of the parties involved, and especially the role of the journalists trying to phone-in with extra material, would be in order. I soon got lost what exactly the issues were. I kept watching in eager anticipation of a finale, hopefully revealing all secrets and intrigues, but it did not happen.

During the Q&A after the screening I thought I heard that the complete history around the TV-show was made up, and not related to reality. Freely translated: a vehicle to keep the story in motion. That was the moment I stopped the Q&A, lost my leniency to follow it, and switched to writing this commentary. I may have missed something important when the protagonists were introduced, however.

The black&white is another annoyance. It may intended only to suggest we are back in the 80-ies (color-TV existed more than 15 years before that time). It did not work for me and it is redundant anyway (whoever wants The Ten Commandments and/or Ben Hur shot in black&white to remind the viewer that this happened in the past??).

Wha?...

This movie is very rich, but in my opinion too short! It feels like if someone tried to trim Pulp Fiction down to 45 minutes.

The other reviews make it seem like there is no action, but there are scenes with movement, and vehicles... the whole swirl of events is fast, pretty deliriously so. At the end you feel like everything just blew by.

But I will think on it more, I feel like there is more to get. Therefore I would say it is worth a watch.

But more for a night when you would enjoy a play--intriguing characters played by a cast that acts continuously very well. Black and white seemed a challenge for me here, but it gives a Twilight Zone feel mixed with a vaporwave dream essence of news and commercials: hard to tell what year this takes place!