El Sanatorio

I've been an avid follower of the horror/comedy sub genre since I can remember. The only movies that I really like that I remember are from the eighties *(Gremlins, Creepshow, An American werewolf in London), cause recently what they do is pass parodies like Scary Movie and Transilmania as Horror comedy, and what they really are is bad Comedies.

So when you have a movie, where the characters are believable, there's a slasher (a Ghost Nun nonetheless), and good special effects that not look like cheap CG. You as a lover of the Horror Comedy sub genre, feel pleased. This really is a cult movie.

It pays cult to the legend of the old Duran Sanatorium in Costa Rica, a place that is known to be plagued by Ghosts and legends. It pays cult to the old 80's horror movies and finally it pays cult to the found footage and mockumentary style. It's really an amazing mix, well crafted from beginning to end, following this ghost hunting team that are really young and funny to watch, cause the movie instead of being just build over the paranormal activity, it also builds around their own problems to produce the film and personalities making them likable enough, so when bad things start happening you care for them.

I give this movie a 9, cause I feel like it should've been longer, It's the first time in a long time that I didn't wanted the movie to end.

Young Luis (Luis Carlos Bogantes) and Arturu (Pablo Masis) are aspiring documentary film-makers, and they have decided that their first subject will be a long-abandoned sanatorium. Originally used for tuberculosis patients, it has also served as a prison, a madhouse and an orphanage – and, oh yeah, it has a reputation for being haunted. Our fearless documentarians recruit "excellent investigator" Mariana (Maria Elena Oreamuno) and psychic Lulu (Maria Luisa Garita), get the overbearing Esteban (Olgar Gonzales) to finance the film (well, using his father's money), hire Kurt (Kurt Dyer) to score the music for the film and to act as the resident atheist and sceptic, and find some tech guys to round out the team. They interview old people who stayed at the sanatorium and saw mysterious sights (which could have been the product of fevers), talk to journalists who have themselves tried to investigate the place only to be run out of the building through sheer fright, and eventually drive out to the old sanatorium themselves to see what they might find. Will their expectations be met, or dashed? Will strange paranormal events take place before their eyes and their recording equipment? And most importantly, will they make it out alive? This is a short (73 minutes) and very funny film – yes, it hits on the typical horror tropes for a film of this sort, but also includes little side bits such as Arturu's infatuation with Mariana (it seems they made out a couple of times in the past, but she confesses that she was "pretty wasted" at the time). A very low-budget film, the talented director/co-writer/co-producer Miguel Gomez manages the few special effects very handily, and there are actually a few genuine scares along the way. Señor Gomez was on hand for the FantAsia 2011 screening, and he proudly announced that of the 17 films ever made in Costa Rica, this is the first horror film. Winner of the Audience Award at the Morbido Film Festival in Mexico in 2010, this is a gem of a movie, with the love that went into making it apparent in every frame, although I will note that it would be useful for the film-makers to re-do the English subtitles, which are not very good. Recommended!

The absolute best compliment I can reward "El Sanatorio" with is that the film singlehandedly re-sparked my long lost interest in the so-called "Found Footage" horror trend. Personally I never understood the success of the massively overrated "The Blair Witch Project" and when highly acclaimed other titles, like "REC" and "Cloverfeld" and "Diary of the Dead", also didn't leave the slightest impression on me neither, I just decided to turn my back on the sub genre entirely. For me, the one and only truly great "Found Footage" milestone remains "Cannibal Holocaust" and never even bothered to check out the "Paranormal Activity" films and all of its imitations. "El Sanatorio" played at a small horror festival in my country and I went to see it with a minimum of expectations. I'm glad to announce that it was a pleasant surprise; a low-budget and semi-amateurish effort with a lot of goodwill and the heart for horror in the right place. An assembly of young aspiring film makers prepares to shoot a documentary about a supposedly haunted sanatorium (and previously prison and orphanage) in Costa Rico. They don't really believe in ghosts themselves, so they process the evidence and approach the witnesses with a large dose of sarcasm and parody. Once inside the abandoned and ominous location, however, a series of inexplicable paranormal events causes their cynical attitude to change drastically within less than 24 hours… I'm not exactly too familiar with Cost Rican cinema, but this is surely an accomplishment they can be proud of over there. Writer/director Miguel Alejandro Gomez professionally succeeds in rotating the tone and atmosphere simultaneously with the events at the sanatorium; from light-headed and comical towards tense and disturbing. Near the climax, neither the characters nor the audience are laughing anymore, and correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that still the ultimate purpose of a ghost tale? The acting performances come across as completely natural, the documentary style narration and camera work (for once) isn't irritating and the film benefices enormously from its uniquely spooky locations. "El Sanatorio" also features a good amount of great visual effects and a few genuinely efficient "jump" moments, which is something I often missed in the aforementioned successful titles. Congratulations to director Miguel Alejandro Gomez and his entire cast & crew! I hope to see more of them in the near future, and particularly María Elena Oreamuno… She's an incredible natural beauty of an actress.

This has to be the one of the greatest film in Costarican history. It gets you since the beginning in this one kind of a mockumentary and keeps building up till the last act.

The acting is really good. The camera work is amazing, it takes us as an audience and make us one more of the characters. Miguel Gomez is only 28 and has become the biggest promise in filmmaking for our little Costa Rica. I'm really proud of this film, it shows a real personality, so much talent, the actors, the special effects, the cinematography, but what I appreciate more than with the other films that have been produced in Costa Rica is how entertaining the movie was.

The atmosphere created through the film is a really an amazing achievement. At the beginning you are laughing, and at the end you are feeling scared, it really masters the mix of comedy and horror, last movies I saw achieving something close to this was The Evil Dead series.

The movie already won an award at Morbido Horror Film Festival in Mexico, I see it playing in the Horror and Fantasy circuit and doing great in this kind of festivals. Watch the film, you'll like it.

An average, but still interesting Spanish take on found footage. But the chosen genre is actually where it fails - believebality starts as so-so, then they just throw it out of the window, especially with some joke elements of the story being introduced (which essentially make the fun of it). And the way the end scenes were filmed...yeah...like it's a staged TV show rather than found footage.

The story is relatively interesting to follow, the characters are nothing interesting, but at least they're not your typical robotic and overcliched Americans you usually see in horror movies. Their motivations to stay in an obviously haunted hospital are very weak, despite the contract being the reason (the medium decides to walk away then with just some irrelevant talk with one of the others decides to stay again and then very sure about it all of the sudden).

It still manages to be creepy and the visual effects are good.