The Body

This is how you have to do a movie like this. It's a ride from beginning to end and it will keep you guessing throughout. Maybe you'll get things right and see the signs, maybe you're just enjoying things unraveling as the movie flows by. Whatever the case, you can be more than entertained with this little gem.

The acting is top notch and the script is really clever (I try to use this term as lightly as possible) and there is a touch of coolness to the characters, that is not forced upon them. The story might seem bigger at the beginning that it finally turns out to be, and there might be people disappointed with the ending. Take a chance though ... or wait for the inevitable US remake ...

El Cuerpo (2012)

A twisty, clever, Spanish production that is edgy and sharp in its filming and conception. There is a corpse, and then there isn't—so who is doing what to whom in a kind of purposely convoluted whodunnit (and who didn't)? It works on a surface level and will suck you in and drag you along. For me, time after time, I was wishing it wasn't just a twist of some plot-writer's handbook at work.

The best parts of the film are really good—a solid cast, murky scenes (many of them in a morgue), hints of what happened that lead you astray, and even the "unreliable narrator" trick, which means you trust the lead character until you gradually realize you shouldn't have.

The constant shifting in the plot will thrill a lot of viewers. It's endlessly putting you on edge. But this ended up also undermining how to watch the film. It seemed that you were pushed outside of it and had to wait for the next turn of perspective. When that happens, it makes sense, basically, but it undermines what happened before. If the film was told truly from one person's perspective, the way (for example) James Stewart drives the narrative in the twisty "Vertigo," you'd excuse all the misunderstandings. But in this one the narration is omniscient, and playing games.

The other key thing that brought it down was a choice by the director to tell us everything instead of have it happen and let the audience experience it. You'll pick this up in the beginning when the main older doctor is led through the crime scene, and one clue after another is announced by some person coming in the room or wandering by. So we get the information, but in a form that is doesn't involve you as viscerally.

You'll see. It's all effective and contrived at the same time.

If you watched films on the beach instead of reading books this would fill the bucket nicely. In a style of a vengeful Inspector Columbo it will keep you juggling the outcomes right to the very end, as the sands begin to fade so to speak.

A very exciting thriller with many interesting and surprised fluctuations which probably even had puzzled Hitchcock but also made him proud.

The film is very classic, almost old-fashioned, and it flirts healthy and often with particularly mentioned the horror master. The story moves very smoothly between Film Noir, and more traditional contemporary thriller.

"The Body" is about a woman's dead body disappears from the morgue. The husband of the deceased woman, quickly becomes a target of both, the murder of his wife and stealing the body. He was called to the scene to assist with the investigation. The interrogations led by the right shady Commissar, with his own dim past and hearings interspersed with flashbacks of the couple's life, which is played in various flashbacks.

Everything takes place in a proper rainy night in the morgue and the surroundings could hardly be more nasty and claustrophobic. The film really works admirably well and fooling with the viewer, exactly where it wants. The script is well written and although certainly a gap or two can be found, don't bother to look when you are in the middle, instead of being frightened and follow the clues presented.

The film is directed by Oriol Paulo, who two years ago-wrote sovereign "Julia's Eyes" in which Belen Rueda plays Julia and in "The Body" she plays the unsympathetic Mayka (the deceased), an incredibly believable performance. There are good actors in all roles and although sometimes the commissar is near the border of caricature so successful balancing act and it never gets too much.

The last scene when everything unraveled is somewhat contrived. Everything needs was not unfolded and some unanswered questions are good to keep a little spice, but despite the somewhat pedagogical explanations in the end, everything leading up to it wonderfully confusing and nerve wracking as well, as I really hope to get jump-to more such films by Oriol Paulo ahead.

7.5/10.

This Spanish Mystery/thriller/Noir film from Oriol Paulo and starring Belen Rueda(Julia's eyes, the Orphanage) had me on the edge of my seat until the very end. What's starts out as a mystery concerning the disappearance of a corpse from the morgue soon turns into a game of cat and mouse as nothing is what it seems and not even the dead can be trusted. Pure dread oozes through the entire film and by the end you are left with the hairs on the back of your neck standing on end and your blood running COLD.