Presencias

I saw it at the Morelia Festival, I didn't expect anything from Luis Mandoki, but he still managed to disappoint me. During the press screening many people chose to sleep in the seats or write text messages on the phone, some even left the room. The show was in the morning and I practically fell asleep even though I went out for two coffees during the screening.

I don't find any positive aspect that can be pointed out in this film. It's being promoted as a horror story and ends up being something else.

It's very boring and those lousy actors.. It's a poorly done project. To top it off, it lasts too long. It's a waste of time, very much in line with the platform it's being promoted on, and a good reason to avoid subscribing to that service.

Even when this movie doesn't contribute with anything new to the genre, it's an interesting and peculiar proposal.

First and foremost, let's address the elephant in the room: Yalitza Aparico. After her Academy Award nominated debut in Roma, there has been a big anticipation and scrutiny of her new projects, unfortunatelly there's no much to say about this role, her time in screen is short, even though the movie lasts two hours and big part of the marketing campaing lied on Aparicio's presence, but hey, that's not her mistake right? It's just how marketing works. Her performance is good, although it doesn't require anything exceptional.

The better and the worst is the plot, Luis Mandoki had very interesting ideas but not all of them work.

Could this have been better? Yes.

Is a bad movie? No, it's way better than most of the horror movies Hollywood gives us every year.

The twist ending of this movie brings up a great concept, but the execution doesn't get it anywhere else.

Honestly almost the whole movie was boring as there wasn't much interesting stuff but the ending left me wondering what was the real reason all that happened, but there wasn't any answer, this interpretation of the story leaves me unsatisfied as usually, the explanation blows your mind. The terror is ill-conceived, thanks to the final plot twist, making it totally unnecessary in the whole story, as well as how boring the whole plot is and its two hours. The characters lack development, making them less interesting than they are, the performances are not horrible but not very believable, the technical aspects, in general, are decent.

This film fails as a horror and as a psychological thriller, despite the interesting concept that the plot twist gives us, as well as the development of the entire plot being boring.

Nepotism is not always a bad thing, we can look at the Cuaron´s family working together effectively; but this time Mandoki´s biggest mistake was to let his wife without any experience as a screenwriter in charge of the screenplay.

They had a very interesting idea as we can find out with the plot twist, but I think it would have worked better as a psychological thriller than a horror movie.

There's a couple of things I really enjoyed, as the visual effects, sound edition and the cinematography. Philip Lozano did a wondferful job portraying the landscapes as beautifly as needed for a horror movie.

Another wise move are the actors. We can realize Alberto Ammann and Yalitza Aparicio are really trying, unfortunately there´s not much they can do with a poor plot.

I think the biggest sin of the movie was its high expectation, being the return of Yalitza Aparicio after her Academy Award nomination, and being directed by once acclaimed Luis Mandoki.