Las tinieblas

A very visually stunning, and moody atmospheric film. Had amazing potential. Should be an 8 but went nowhere and is only a half baked idea. Shame.

While lots of mysterious and intriguing things happen, you won't be satisfied unless you like not getting answers in spades. This is definitely another It comes at night , like other people have noted. At least with that one you get a good idea of what's happening. This one felt like someone really wanted to make a movie but left things undone because of lack of budget. I cant recommend this. Its too bad. Had some great things going for it.

Interesting at first... Builds up tons of questions to the audience... Then it just finishes, leaving you with a feeling of having waste time in a story that tells you basically the plot: "in an apocaliptic world, a father tries to maintain.his family, his children want to find the truth"... Nothing develops, nothing's ends, you get nothing... Good acting though.

This is a typical Spânish horror film in the line of IT COMES AT NIGHT, made the same year, and speaking of a very very close topic. I preferred the other one, but this movie from Spain is not bad either, and as any other horror film produced in this country, it presents kids or teens, but not in the same way as the made in US terror flicks. If you watch closely the Spanish features made since decades now, most of them show children, and this one makes no exception at all. I understand that it is not for all audiences because it needs to use some philosophical thoughts to fully get the message of the whole stuff; that I did not succeeded at. It is question of family and relationship between kids and their old man. Many links are available. Yes, it is too much complex to be accepted by most audiences. The Hollywood industry would have never made such a film, or in a different way.

I don't mind films with narratives that are a bit vague and can be left open to interpretation by the viewer, but there is a limit, and for me this film went way over that limit. It set up compelling mystery after compelling mystery in the first 2 acts then ended abruptly with no answers to any of them. When the film ended I felt cheated, it was like the filmmakers had no idea how to answer any of the mysteries their film had set up in the first 2 acts so decided to not even bother trying and instead introduced even more mysteries into the 3rd act that were left unanswered as well.

I can think of at least half a dozen plot threads in this film that were left unanswered, and I don't just mean left open to interpretation by the viewer, but unanswered. That's not fun, that's not artsy, that's just plain good old fashioned poor storytelling. It's a shame because the first 2 acts that set everything up were so good.

4/10