La herencia Valdemar

This movie was okay. Not a complete waste of time if you have time to waste. The Gothic atmosphere and the Spanish country side were creepy and beautiful. From the start, I knew it wasn't going to be a masterpiece just purely from the way the woman walked into her boss's office like she was on a runway. This movie starts with modern times and 15 minutes in, we get what I assumed was going to be a flashback but was really the meat of the story. The actors in the olden times are much better comparably to the modern day actors in terms of acting. Also, this is apparently part one and there will be a part two, from the looks of the preview after the movie finished. It feels more like a serial than a movie.

As to the plot, like the previous reviewer stated, they forgot about the modern times after one of the characters starts telling a story about what happened in the past that made the place haunted, so there really is no story or plot for the modern part of the movie. The plot regarding the origination of the haunting was decent, was spooky at some parts, but it still felt lacking. I guess you have to watch both parts in order to really get the crux of the movie.

This movie is not self contained.

You could be forgiven thinking this is a TV movie of the week two parter (this one being part 1 of course). But the movie begins quite strong. The actors seem to really get behind the concept and the mystery is building slowly, but in a good way.

Of course this being only half the experience means that some characters are just being introduced more or less, so you can see where they will take this with part 2. The late great Paul Naschy is one of the better known actors in this, though don't expect his role to be big (especially considering the age he was when he shot it). For fans of his work this oddity will work, but some may think he should have had a better "farewell" movie. As it is, the movie does fail to live up to its good beginning.

I stumbled upon the 2010 Spanish horror mystery "La Herencia Valdemar" (aka "The Valdemar Legacy") by random chance here in 2021. And reading that the movie was based on H. P. Lovecraft works, of course there was not a moments doubt of me having to sit down and watch it.

Well, writer and director José Luis Alemán might have been reading H. P. Lovecraft, but "La Herencia Valdemar" was not even remotely close to being Lovecraftian in any aspect, neither in storyline contents nor in atmosphere. This was just downright a gothic supernatural horror mystery.

Sure, the writer threw in the likes of actual people such as Aleister Crowley and Bram Stoker into the storyline to spruce things up, but it just didn't really amount to much of anything noteworthy. In fact, you have to venture about 80 minutes into the movie, and the movie runs for 104 minutes total, so it was just too little, too late.

Sitting through "La Herencia Valdemar" was brutally trying. This movie was an ordeal to get through. And it was especially bad since up until 80 minutes into the movie it was essentially just filler to set the stage and build the atmosphere. And then the movie's climax was unleashed around 80 minutes in, and it was about as anti-climatic as it could be. It wasn't worth the wait at all.

The acting performances in the movie were adequate, I suppose. It was hard to tell because the actors and actresses literally had nothing solid to work with in terms of a proper script, storyline or character gallery. I wasn't familiar with a single performer in this movie, and that is usually something I enjoy in a movie, but that fact just didn't apply to "La Herencia Valdemar".

For a horror movie then writer and director just failed to deliver anything wholesome or even entertaining. So this was a swing and a miss of a movie.

My rating of "La Herencia Valdemar" lands on a generous three out of ten stars. The movie was just downright slow paced, uneventful and boring.

... so don't start unless you intend to watch them both, preferably back to back.

It's worth it.

THE VALDEMAR LEGACY is the first of a Spanish two-part horror film series that, despite the title, has nothing to do with the classic Waldemar Daninsky series of werewolf features starring Paul Naschy, even though Naschy himself has a small role playing a butler. No, instead this is a pure haunted house saga apparently influenced by Lovecraft's Cthulhu writings, although I'd call that a loose influence at best - certainly there's nothing explicitly Mythos related here. It starts off as the usual young-woman-visits-a-haunted house tale before moving into a lengthy back story. Sadly, the SFX are below par and the story is too long and too unfocused, just another low budget mess of a production.