Influenze maligne

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.

I didn't find this to be a slow burn as some have sugggested, but I found it to be very disjointed and didn't pace well. Too many things are happening that you don't know what the story is, until toward the latter half, and even then it was still all over the place. It is like a ghost movie, no wait its a possession movie, no wait its a witch movie, no its a revenge movie.....sigh. It is like it didn't know where to go with all of the activity...oh yeah there is poltergeist activity too. Good grief this was difficult to watch and try to stay focused.

Terrifying and eerie film upon a peculiar family and a mysterious house with events go awry . This Denis's Rovira debut feature has the renowned actress Emma Suárez and Maggie Civantos, Alain Hernández, and Manuela Vellés as part of the cast. This is the Supernatural Thriller "La Influencia" (aka "The Influence") a film produced by Nadie es Perfecto with the participation of Sony Pictures and Netflix. This is an interesting and disturbing thriller with intrigue, suspense, twists, turns and the build-up tension is developed step by step . It deals with nurse Alicia (Manuela Vellés) moves back to to her natal little town of Duesos (municipality of Caravia, east to Principality of Asturias; northwest to Spain) , at her family home occur weird events while caring for her dying mother (Emma Suarez) connected to a life support machine and still breathing when she fell in a coma one month ago. Moving there with her unemployed husband Mikel (Alain Hernández) and their daughter Nora (Claudia Placer) . Alicia meets again with her younger sister Sara (Maggie Cevantos) and she meets Ana (Marta Castellote) , Victoria's nurse assistant.

A new horror/thriller feature film based on the original 1988 novel by Ramsey Campbell , packing shocks , die hard scenario , grisly killings , suspense and with unexpected discoveries will come to light , emerging plot twists at the worst possible time. The film contains a claustrophobic atmosphere , hair-raising frames and sinister developing resulting in fateful consequences . This is an intriguing film with amazing happenings that begins and works little by little , but then things collide in horrifying and criminal events. That's why our starring is shocked by bizarre incidents , as strange events lead him to wonder if it's haunted or if it's all in his mind . As main protagonist Manuela Vellés suffers hallucinations , she has visions of her troubled past , suffering grisly recollections from her abused infancy , really haunted by her childhood memories and with a witch-mother turned insane . This nail-biting movie displays plot twists , tension enough , thrills ride , graphic violence, and is entertaining enough . Packs large suspense , guts and gore , there's body count, this one actually knocks off an immense amount with extremely gory scenes at its final and strong violence , at times . It's a decent suspense horror thriller , darkly photographed by cameraman Isaac Villa and set to a thrilling soundtrack by Arnau Ballester . The cast is nice and adequate . Stars Manuela Vellés giving a fine acting as the young mother who must struggle with an evil force in the house while attempts to reconcile her present with a hard childhood due to the abusive and dominant mother. Along with Maggie Civantos as the loner , estranged sister , Alain Hernández as the unemployed husband who eventually finds a job in the town port and Emma Suárez as the deranged grandmother who turns a creepy witch. And other very secondaries , such as : Felipe García Vélez , Daniela Rubio , Ramón Esquinas and Mariana Cordero.

¨La influencia¨(2019) is distributed by Sony Pictures and currently available on Netflix, being professionally directed by Spanish director Denis Rovira , although not very original because it copies other previous horror films . After shooting three multi-award-wining short films "Angel", "Lazarus Taxon" and "The Faucet", on July 21, 2019, Denis released his first feature film as director and co-writer. In 2020 he directed 3 episodes for the reboot series "El Internado, Las Cumbres" (aka "Boarding School: Las Cumbres"), produced by The Mediapro Studios and Buendía Studios. It premieres worldwide on February 19, 2021, on Amazon Prime Video. In 2021 he was commissioned to direct 4 more episodes of the second season "El Internado, Las Cumbres". Its premieres in March 2022 on Amazon Prime Video. This same year he shot 2 episodes of the second season of"Warrior Nun" (2020) , produced by Netflix Studios (USA), Reality Distortion Field (Canada), and Fresco Films. Simon Barry is the Showrunner. Premieres in November 2022. In 2022 Denis directed also 5 episodes of the 2nd season of "Welcome to Eden" a Spanish Original Netflix show (thriller/suspense/young adult) that will be released in 2023. Rating : 6/10.

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.

I can't find a film that entertains and scares me. I didn't expect much from this one. It wasn't scary but it kept me entertained. It was better than a lot of American over CGI'd and overacted movies but with the usual flIckering lights and jump scare tactics

Overall better than some famous so called horror films.