La influencia

Imagine a bad cook trying to make hearty soup. Get everything in your kitchen and chuck it into a pot and imagine it will turn out ok. What you get is every cliche of every horror film you've ever seen thrown together with a weak narrative. Sadly boring and un-engaging.

The nurse Alicia (Manuela Vellés) is summoned by her sister Sara (Maggie Civantos) and returns to the dark house of her mother Victoria (Emma Suárez) with her husband, the unemployed electrician Mikel (Alain Hernández), and their ten year-old daughter Nora (Claudia Placer). Alicia and Victoria have been estranged to each other for many years and now Victoria is terminal in comatose and Alicia will help the nurse Ana (Marta Castellote). Alicia has recollections from her abused childhood, when Sara and she were maltreated and controlled by her mother in rituals of witchcraft. Mikel finds a room with witchcraft objects and occult books that belong to Victoria, shows to his wife and they keep it locked. Soon Nora communicates with Victoria and changes her behavior, befriend the creepy outcast girl Luna (Daniela Rubio) and Alicia realizes that her daughter in under control of the witch Victoria.

"La influencia", a.k.a. "The Influence", is a creepy horror film developed in slow pace like most of the European movies. The atmosphere is dark and gruesome, the performances are great but the story becomes predictable when the lawyer reads the testament. The screenplay could be better but the underrated "La influencia" is a good horror film. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): Not Available

An interesting movie as the script is different,and the actors and the child artists are also good..there is a good suspense mood

I've tried to look for some positives in this film, and not to simply just say it's a poor film, but in reality it's just a poor film. It's tagged as a horror, it isn't, or if it is, then those behind it have very different views on what makes a good horror movie. It is agonisingly slow, the pacing is the main issue, you keep wanting something to happen, for it to spark into life, but that moment never comes. The story was all over the place, it made no sense.

If you can reach the end, you're a trooper. I was just bored. 3/10

I read a lot of really bad reviews for La Influencia but to be honest I think most of them are a bit too harsh. I agree that it's not a masterpiece, certainly not in the horror genre, but for a Spanish horror movie it has its moments. A couple jump scares, a story that is suspenseful enough to be entertaining, and a cast that might never win an Oscar but that is better than average. All in all La Influencia isn't that bad, just don't have too high of expectations.