La comunidad

Alex De La Iglesia is one of a triumvirate of Spanish directors whose deliciously black comedies have found a sizeable audience outside of Spain (the other two being Bigas Luna and the master Pedro Almodovar). Iglesia's debut ACCIONE MUTANTE was a wonderfully perverse low budget sci-fi parody, but it was his super-dark horror comedy THE DAY OF THE BEAST that first brought him international recognition, and a brief and unlikely stab at Hollywood with the entertaining PERDITA DURANGO.

LA COMMUNIDAD shows that Iglesia has matured a *lot* as a film maker, and feels much slicker and more accomplished than his earlier films. Carmen Maura (Spain's finest actress) plays an estate agent with a gift for telling lies, who discovers a stash of money in an appartment she has to show to some clients. She thinks this is what her life has been waiting for, but she doesn't count on THE COMMUNITY that inhabits the appartment building.

LA COMMUNIDAD is a wonderful thing - a horror movie about ordinary people. Forget mutants, satanists or the devil himself - none of these are as scary as the guy next door! Iglesia brings out the darkest side of our human nature, bringing out delicious black comedy, horror and thriller elements without the need to invoke anything supernatural or fantastical.

Iglesia's direction is assured - helped no doubt by having a veteren like Maura in the lead role. The pacing of the film is spot on, and the atmosphere and tension is built to great effect. The film is creepy, crazy and builds to real edge of the seat tension. The characters are all wonderful, and the cast give great performances. A great piece of work!

9/10

I was really surprised when I watched this movie - only de la Iglesia's movie I watched before this was "La dia de la bestia" (Day of the beast) which was very good but this masterpiece is even better ! Here is everything: twisted plot where all characters are "twisted" (even one that looks good and nice at the beginning turn opposite), atmosphere is great, humor is bizzare and black like a night :) ... and there are some rather gory scenes with amazing action-stunt ending !

I mean, worth watching of any minute - I give it 10 ! Highly recommended !

I saw this movie on Tv last night where it was called "Common wealth"

It is really a movie that has it all...Suspense,drama,action humor and a little bit of love. There is no movie even remotely comparable to this, but if movies were cars I would say that this would be a collision between the Matrix,Rosemary's baby, Clerks and in a way maybe Run Lola run. It is one of those headturner movies that proves once more that European filmmakers are brilliant at making films and having said that, I personally LUVED this movie.

This movie was great, i really loved the character development,the way director Alex de la Iglesia used its shots and gave us this dark comedy with suspense filled film. Now as a part of my vast collection this film stands as a great film from its director, i was (and still am in some sort of way) in love with his "Day of the beast" now his latest La Comunidad is a great film that shows us a fun story about people ways into big time money. I hope you have a chance to see it and have a blast about its crazyness and its fun ways to entertain all ages. The starwars freak in this film was so funny, i just love his scenes. I want to give it a good 10 out of 10 on Spanish cool horror/suspense films.

In Madrid, Julia (Carmen Maura) is a broker of fifty and something years trying to sell an old apartment without garage, but downtown and well located. When she visits the place with her clients, she realizes that the apartment is ready for living, having all furniture and outfits. She decides to stay in the apartment for a couple of days with her loser mate while performing the sale. There is a water infiltration through the ceiling from the upper apartment and the firemen are called. They find the neighbor, an old man, dead in a very dirty apartment. Julia finds by chance three hundred millions of pesetas in his apartment, but becomes trapped by the other weird neighbors that want to get the old man's money for themselves. This suspenseful tale of greed, with lots of black humor, is another great movie of Aléx de la Iglesia (of `Mutant Action', `The Day of the Beast' and `Perdita Durango' among others). Alternating crime and thriller with very dark comedy in bizarre situations, it is an excellent entertainment for fans of this genre. I liked it a lot. This movie was awarded with the Goya Award. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): `A Comunidade' (`The Community')