El páramo

Brilliantly written, acted, and produced. A simple story in a modest but effective setting that delivers an engaging, at times disturbing, insight into the frailty of the human mind. More psychologically unsettling than scary.

80% of the movie is a hysterical mother screaming for her weakling "Diego", absolutely not a must-see, there are plenty of better movies than this snooze-fest.

Good performances, especially from the kid, who is desperately trying to make sense of it all, and to protect his mother. Also about how the safety measures that we erect around us could end up hurting us in preventing healthy growth.

This movie doesn't have many horror elements, it feels more like a thriller.

Lately the movies that are sold to us as horror end up being something totally different, just like this one, which has a lot of suspense that works. Although the film shows how loneliness can be a terrifying emotional breaking point, it does not have aspects of a horror film, but the suspense it generates by showing how isolation and abandonment can destroy a person's sanity works. The acting is very good, the production design is also good, and the direction conveys the suspense and mystery that the plot describes.

The execution isn't the best, but it's suspenseful and well-done made, so it's effective in terrifying you psychologically for a while.

'El páramo' is not a simple horror film. It is, in fact, a much deeper film with an interesting gaze towards fear, loneliness, the loss of loved ones and what remains after they leave.

David Casademunt, director of the film, lost his mother at age 15 and, according to his own words, the virus of fear settled in at his house for almost a year after the loss. This goes to show that the film is probably a therapeutic excercise to openly talk about what happened during that dark time, almost as dark as the film, and express how that 15-year-old teen felt during the process.

'El páramo' is narrated through the look of Diego (Asier Flores), a kid who feels lonely and whose loneliness increases as his parents vanish multiple times troughout the film, phisically, psicologically and literally.

This feeling of loneliness is probably the main topic of the film and is reinforced with love for film language through the use of recurring very long shots, where Diego becomes a small ant as compared to the inmensity of the portrayed landscape. What he loves and takes for granted is vanishing, as does his own integrity as a child, so he feels alone and abandoned to its own fate.

Casademunt proves that he knows what he's doing and understands how to craft a film, from story, to script, to camera movement and shot selection. Hopefully there's more of his work coming and we have news from him soon.