The Communion Girl

Creepy motion picture with chills , thrills and terrible murders. Taking as a starting point the bizarre urban legend of the ghost of a girl who appeared on the day of her first communion, the filmmaker Victor García elaborates in his first foray into Spanish cinema an intriguing and gruesome rural horror film set in May 1986. After a night out, in a little town anchored in the past, the recently arrived Sara and her friend Rebe decide to hitchhike home. During the journey, a girl dressed as a communion crosses them on the road. Along the way , they encounter a doll wearing a communion dress. The doll, a symbol of a tradition that is given to children who have just received their first sacrament, ends up at Sara's house as a gift for Judith. The young friends beging investigating and eventually figure out the origin of the doll , leading them to discover an eerie legend that haunts the mysterious location . From that moment, their lives will become hell . She's lost !. She's alone !. And she's cold ! . In the name of the Father, and the Son...!

This chilling pìcture contains bit good fun with grisly killings , relentless horror and lots of blood . This ¨La niña de la comunión (2022)¨ can be rated as a ¨Rural Terror ¨ flick set at a very conservative town in Tarragona , Spain , as the nightmare starts when our protagonists come upon a little girl holding a doll, dressed for her first communion , from now on , a series of inexplicable situations begin to happen . This chiller takes as reference emblematic films of horror movies such as ¨The Ring¨, ¨Nightmare on the Elm street¨, as well as James Wan's films : ¨Annabelle¨saga , to create a story with its own mythology to which is added ¨The figure of a disturbing doll with a curse¨, according to its director . The film is starred by a group of young and mostly unknown performers led by Carla Campra (¨Veronica¨) , Marc Soler (¨Todos Mienten¨) , Aina Quiñones (¨No Matarás¨) and Carlos Oviedo (¨Las Leyes de la Frontera¨).

It displays a tense and suspenseful musical score by composer Marc Timón . As well as colorful cinematography , though mostly dark , by cameraman José Luis Bernal . The motion picture was regular but professionally directed by Víctor Garcia . This Spanish director with an international career is expert on terror sequels , such as : ¨Return to House on Haunted Hill¨ , ¨Mirrors 2¨ , ¨Hellraiser revelations ¨, ¨30 Days of Night: Blood Trails¨and other terror films as ¨Gallows Hill¨ , ¨Arctic Predator¨ and ¨An Affair to Die For¨ . ¨La niña de la comunión¨ (2022) rating : 5.5/10 . Average but acceptable and passable.

I quite liked this movie. I wanted to rate it higher, unfortunately its unoriginality and predictability kept me from doing so... but it was definitely entertaining. The story is very "been there done that". Still interesting, just not wildly enthralling and following a familiar formula leading to the predictability.

I'd say the most successful part of this was the acting. I thought everyone did a really good job and that was a large factor in the level of engagement in this film. Small shout out to the girl in the very beginning. She had a very short scene but she killed it.

They did a good job with keeping up the spooky, atmospheric vibe throughout. It was disappointing that every time they showed the "monster" I was taken out of the moment because to me the prosthetics were unconvincing and looked a tad silly. I don't know what the budget was like on this production, but the movie looked really nice, so I was surprised by the kinda subpar special effects and CGI but that's not a deal breaker.

The story definitely could've used some fine-tuning and a little zest. The pacing was certainly on the slower side and edged on too slow but was fine. It started to get particularly interesting all of a sudden and then it ended... which was unfortunate. I would have loved to cut some of the filler that slowed the pacing down and had what was the ending happen at the beginning of the third anct and gotten some more story.

Regardless, I think this movie was successful as is and a lot of that success was carried by the actors so, bravo guys. 5.5 rounding down to a 5, would recommend.

After a wild night of partying, a woman and her friend come across a strange doll in the desert which draws them into a nightmarish series of hauntings by the ghostly owner of the doll and must uncover the sinister origins behind its appearance to leave the mystery behind them.

Overall, this was a decent enough if somewhat problematic genre effort. One of the better elements here is the way this works with the build-up of the spirit's presence in the family. The first half here dealing with the friend group interacting with the party and her home life signals the discovery of the doll and how it's affecting her giving this a solid start. There's some fun to be had with the idea of the town's superstitions figuring into the events to write it off and the intrusion on their lives and how it's obvious something is wrong that gives everything its impact. As this comes off the way it does, the second half bringing about the start of the hauntings is all rather enjoyable like the rest of those kinds of genre efforts. Since we're graced with an appropriately creepy backstory for the ghostly figure and its equally chilling appearance of it, the scenes where it appears and torments or even outright kills others in fine sequences that makes its supernatural powers felt, giving this plenty of somewhat suspenseful attacks. Even the idea of how to stop the ghost is fun, having several solid connections to its backstory and being rather fun which gives this a lot to like. There are some issues here that bring this one down. Among the biggest drawbacks to this one is the overly familiar setup and storyline that makes this feel quite predictable. Working as a straightforward throwback to this style of Asian ghost movie featuring the wronged spirit coming back and haunting those who get caught up in its path. There's not much in the way of deviation taking place here as it runs along this type of story and makes it quite easy to see the beats coming for easy predictability, lessening the tension somewhat. The other drawback here is that there's not much in the way of action for long stretches of the running time leading to some moments where it plods along. Several of the sideplots here, with the friends' home life being quite troublesome and outright abusive is an angle that doesn't need all the time devoted to it that it does, and several parts of the investigation lead to characters meeting up several times over so they can come off redundant. The repeated nature of the genre setup comes into play as well, making this come down from where it should be.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Language, Violence, drug use, and children-in-jeopardy.

Sadly, the horror genre just isn't for the Spanish producers. Sure they have some good movies, like Rec for example, but overall they create amazing thrillers, with brilliant suspense and perfect twist endings.

When talking about horror, it's quite sure that the movie will be a swing and a miss, because this is just how it happens over and over.

If you want to try productions like The Invisible Guest, The Hidden Face, Times Crimes, Julia's Eyes and many more, you will have a great time with those. Here is where Spain prevails and gives us amazing movies to remember and even watch again in order to better understand them.

La nina de la comunion is a weak movie, as unoriginal as it gets, brings nothing new, nothing fresh and doesn't deliver with it's ending either. It's just something you've seen many times, done poorly.

Nothing to recommend here sadly, go and find something else. I might recommend Piggy, it's new, it's different good but not horror as in tension or scares. It's the typical good Spanish production.

Cheers!

Let me start off by saying this movie brings nothing new to the table. Two teenagers leave a party by foot and get picked up by some guys in their car. Our protagonist Sara sees a girl in a white dress and shortly after they find a doll in the woods. They get told about a local story that whoever sees this girl is cursed. That's the basic premise of the movie but I think the movie did a decent job with it. We have seen similar stories a thousand times before and by now it's just annoying.

But I think this movie's execution is good enough for the movie not to be complete trash. Probably the most interesting character is Sara's best friend Rebe and her relationship with her abusive alcoholic father. Sara also has some trouble at home because she got grounded and has a strict father. These relationships make you empathize with them because they just want to save their friends and themselves from the curse received from the doll. Also the makeup of the evil entity looks good and whenever she's on screen the movie is tension filled. Like I said the movie does nothing new and we've seen it all before but the execution is overall okay for a one-time watch. [5,5/10]