Shrew's Nest

Macarena Gómez is astounding as Montse, the agoraphobic seamstress who has been taking care of her younger sister since their parents died. One day, a man who lives above them falls down the stairs and can't move. Montse takes him in, but grows so enamored with him that she makes sure he'll never leave.

Shrew's Nest borrows a little bit from Misery and a bit from melodramatic gothic stories of family secrets and crazy old spinsters going haywire, but it's incredibly well made and the acting, especially by Gomez, is phenomenal. Patient viewers will be rewarded with an all-out gore fest during the film's finale.

I have to admit, that when I saw where this was going (you can spot the signs early on), I wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did in the end. Predictability aside, this is very well acted. It's graphic at times (with the violence), but it's what it does in your head, that is most effective.

If you do love horror movies in general, then this might be one for you, otherwise the drama aspect of it, might not be enough to keep you interested. I do think they mix it up in a nice fashion, acting contributing and elevating a sort foreseeable outcome or at least direction this is heading.

I was just looking for a moderate movie when I picked this up. This is a very disturbing story about misery and love. It is a nice movie overall but what a fantastic performance by Macarena Gómez, such performance would have easily landed her an Oscar if this was a Hollywood movie

It really is amazing that producer Alex de Iglesia has gotten so far without being a world celebrity film maker. This one is a quickie directed by a couple of his colleagues with unfamiliar players (Mrs. de Iglesea, the striking Carolina Bang, has a quite small part) and while it has a personality of it's own we can still see the macabre, master-crafted Iglesea style in it.

We get one of his closed environments like the apartment block in LA COMUNIDAD or Resines' space ship in ACCION MUTANTE, here a flat in a fifties Spanish apartment block, which the camera never leaves. Shut in seamstress Gómez (who proves to have a scream queen background that includes a Stuart Gordon Lovecraft adaptation) terrorizes her younger sister, former child actress Nadia de Santiago, now at the age where getting out of the house to work has made her take an interest in boys. Then neighbor Silva falls down the stairs - and proves to have a secret of his own. Throw in religious fanaticism and morphine addiction.

Gripping, perverse, bloody but not without rounded characters in the confusion. The great Luis Tosar is particularly imposing in his small footage.

Giving us some idea of the shortness of the film critic memory a few writers have cited MISERY but no one seems to notice that it's retreading WHATEVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE.

And agoraphobia is the least of them.

This movie is worth watching just for Macarena Gómez's performance alone. Such an actress! Others in the cast pulled their weight as well. Some critics are dissing Hugo Silva, but an actor can only do so much when his or her onscreen time mostly involves just lying prone in a bed. Silva did fine in scenes when his character was more or less mobile.

Clearly this is a horror movie, but it has a low key comedic element as well. Only someone with Gomez's talent, and that of the director who turned her loose, could get away with the 'shenanigans' she portrayed (as Montse) and not have the audience simply shrug off the show as a silly slasher flick.

For those interested in making a low budget indie movie themselves someday, note how practically all the scenes took place in one apartment. Far less expense dealing with lighting, weather, set up time, transportation, etc. Lots of movies use one or two indoor sets for the same reason, but they rarely even approach the same energy level as Musarañas, aka Shrew's Nest.