Verónica

The Vay Ve Ver

Verónica
2017 Spain Directed by Paco Plaza
London Film Festival Monday 15th October

So the fourth of my 2017 London Film Festival screenings was Verónica, a new film directed by Paco Plaza, who was the co-director of the first two excellent [REC•] movies and solo director of the third of the four (which I personally thought was slightly less successful when it jettisoned the ‘found footage’ first person POV style of filmmaking a little way into the running time). The film is purported (according to the various captions at the start and end of the movie... more on those later) to be inspired by the unknown events which build up to the lead detective of a police team arriving at a potential ‘crime scene’ and going on to  file the first official report in Spanish history to go on record saying the investigating team were a witness to paranormal activity. Now, I’d kinda like to believe that’s true and several sources on the internet seem to be taking that claim as fact but... I can’t find anything on the real story on the internet either so... not 100% sure I’d take that with anything less than a pinch of salt but, on the other hand, just because I can’t find anything about it in English on the internet, doesn’t mean to say there’s not loads about it in Spanish, I guess.

Now I’ve got a lot of respect for this director because, a number of years ago now, he did something with that first [REC•] film that I really wasn’t expecting from anyone. That is, he took the zombie genre (well, not quite zombies but close enough) and made it frightening again. Well, I say again but I’m not really certain the zombie genre ever really was that frightening, to be honest and... yeah, he made a zombie film which was genuinely scary, rather than just being another ‘body count’ movie. So that was good.

Here he takes the ‘demonic thing summoned by people messing around with a Ouija board’ genre and, although I have to say that he didn’t really succeed in making this film in any way scary, he did make a really fun film which hits up on all the genre clichés and which had some good one liners in it... which, I’m happy to say, had the audience laughing out loud.

Set in the early 1990s, the film has a strong opening which is very similar to the ‘journey to the apartment block in the original [REC•] in that it seems to be shot first person and it’s a rush of chaos as the police respond to the panicked phone call for urgent help, which you hear on the soundtrack as their vehicles rush through the streets to their destination. The lead detective bursts in and we see a shot of the title character, played astonishingly believably by actress Sandra Escacena, her face in close up, head bent back as she screams... except it’s not a scream, it is a yawn and the soundtrack bleeds off to reveal that this is her waking up one morning, three days earlier.

It’s a nice transitional shot and what Plaza does here, since it’s obvious he’s using this ‘documentary style’ opening as a framing device, is tell you that, as an audience you’re going to have to survive three nights of paranormal scare tactics before you catch up to that bookend sequence. And he doesn’t lose any time in setting up the story. Veronica is the oldest of her three siblings - two sisters and one brother - and she has to get them, and herself, ready for school each day because her mother works truly unsociable hours in a nearby cafe. However, Veronica misses her dead father and wants to attempt to communicate with him so, while all the rest of the children and staff of the convent school which they go to are up on the roof watching the eclipse, Veronica and two friends go to a kind of abandoned basement to have a ‘Ouija session’. Now, even my own mother instilled in me, from an early age, not to mess around with those things based on her own experience of one and, right enough, in best movieland tradition, things start going wrong for Veronica right from the start and she lets in some kind of demonic presence to do all the usual horror movie clichés for the rest of the movie. 

As I said earlier, the film is not breaking any original ground here but it is nice to have a pulpy horror yarn which is as entertaining as this one. It feels like one of those ‘comfort horror’ movies you can watch when you’re on your own and, helpfully, all the main actors, mostly children, are all very good in this. We also get a nicely spooky turn from Consuelo Trujillo as the blind nun who seems to be able to watch what’s going on anyway (she even watches the eclipse without the use of her eyes) and who is nicknamed by the students as Sister Death. She, alone, of all the adults in the story, can see that a demonic entity is walking with Veronica and she’s a great character. There’s a nice throwaway line here as one of the other nuns guides her out of the basement which neither Veronica or Sister Death should be in and Death says something along the lines of... “You can find the answers in the book!” To which the other nun adds, “There. You see what good advice she gives?”... which got another  big laugh from the audience, I can tell you.

There’s some nice photography involved such as shots of the stars stuck onto the ceiling of Veronica’s bedroom superimposed over what else is going on and the camera does the usual roving around Veronica’s apartment to make the audience look for things in the background, which seems to be a common element of contemporary horror films. Like I said, Plaza’s not exactly reinventing the wheel here but he is, at least, making sure that wheel is a well oiled piece of machinery. Enough to get you to the end destination in style.

And that’s pretty much all I’ve got to say about Verónica. The characters are sympathetic and you really don’t want to see anything bad happen to them. There are a few jump scares, some of which did somehow manage to catch out some of the audience and the bookend sequence at the end continues Plaza’s preoccupation with the documentary feel of the piece with... allegedly... the actual, real life  photographs of the aftermath of the 'event' in the apartment that inspired this movie used as accompanying illustrations on the end credits. I didn’t realise that until afterwards because, to me, the pictures looked just the same as the environments in which the film takes place so... good job to whoever did that, I guess. At the end of the day, though, inspired by real life or not, scary or not, the film is a solidly entertaining horror tale and there’s always room for that. It’s certainly more interesting than a lot of the ‘teen horror’ tales which have been doing the rounds just lately so... maybe take a look at this one if it gets any kind of cinema release in your country.

[REC]: Genesis (aka REC 3: Genesis)

Wed or Dead

[REC]: Genesis (aka REC 3: Genesis)

Spain 2012
Directed by Paco Plaza
eone Region 2

I loved the first two parts of the [REC] franchise and was really looking forward to what would be happening next in the series. I’d heard that the two directors were splitting up to make the next two entries in the series back to back... one a sequel and one a prequel, with [REC]: Genesis being the prequel. I wanted to see this in the cinema but, as is par for the course in this country, the only cinema I could find showing this was in Central London with only 9pm screenings for a week, with the DVD release coming out only a few days into that run... if that could be called a proper cinema run. It was so well hidden that I couldn’t even find the cinema showing it until the few screenings I might have been able to attend had already been and gone.

So rather than risk lack of sleep and bad performance at work the next morning for a film journey at the heart of the city to see something I could buy on a home video format for less than the price of the ticket (let alone rail fares) I did the simple thing and bought a copy. I put it on last night and was immediately pulled in to what I assumed the style was going to be for a while. At least three characters are set up within the first few minutes of the film, who are all armed with cameras which are capturing what you, the audience, sees... ready to cover the wedding of the two main protagonists... Clara and Koldo.

All hell breaks loose at the wedding reception when the groom’s uncle, who is feeling “unwell” after a dog at his surgery bit him, starts to get a little peculiar... presumably he’s the vet from the first film who was treating the dog mentioned as having carried the religious zombie/demon virus (so I don’t think it’s fair to be calling this film a prequel, since it seems to be taking place around the same time of the year as the other two movies and it certainly doesn’t cover any of the back story we know from the previous films). When he goes all chompy-chompy on the crowd of wedding guests, it doesn’t take long until you have the various revellers running around eating each other, spreading the virus, and the few survivors are inadvertently split up and looking for each other... mainly the bride and groom who are trying to get back together again.

However, there’s a big “sea change” here and I’d have to guess that this is going to really divide the fans of the series at this point. One of the cameras recording the action is destroyed by the groom and suddenly we break free of the first person shooter style of movie making which has served the [REC] films in the past (and, to be fair, given them their brand name) and into the world of standard, third person viewpoint camerawork, much the same as you’d get in most other films.

I suppose if you’re a talented director whose most well known films internationally are co-directed and shot in a jerky, hand held, camera-eye style... I’m guessing they’ll come a time at some point when you’re going to want to prove to people that you can make great movies without the gimmick of “the characters are actually shooting this themselves” angle getting in the way. So one can hardly blame Paco Plaza from going down this route in this third installment. I do, however, think this was kind of a bad move in that it really gets the film away from the spirit of its predecessors and takes it away from the rough and ready, raw and in-your-face signature of those earlier, horror masterpieces.

It really does kind of amount to a dumbing down of the narrative style, in some ways, too. The first two films, especially the second, found very creative ways to use the camera eye and make it work as an effective, almost interactive at some level, experience. Here, with the camera free to tilt, pan and cut from shot to shot... it’s almost like the film-makers are making it too easy on themselves to just follow bits of the action without challenging themselves to make clever use of scripted meetings and timelines where the “camera operators”... or at least their equipment, can catch up with each other and reveal something new about the narrative.

What’s happened here is something that’s gone from unscored, cinema verite to something which looks very smooth and suddenly has an underscore that, to my ears at least, sounded way inappropriately scored for the imagery it was accompanying. This was especially noticeable after the switch from first person to third person, though, and so I could well have been responding to the juxtaposition of the two styles and the consequences of that in terms of contrast. Even so, I would have thought that this effect would have been self evident in the editing suite or whenever the music track was put on, so perhaps the director should shoulder a little of the responsibility for this one.

Another thing which I thought was a mistake for this style was the fact that, like most directors in many works, some of the shots were using a hand held, shaky cam style to convey certain moments of dramatic tension and, even though the quality of the third person footage is better (way better) than the camera work of the characters, this did give me a funny feeling at times because I found myself trying to figure out which person the camera I was looking through belonged to, in a few places. Again, I think a little more restraint on the director’s part may have ironed out some of this first-person-jitters hangover from the opening 20 minutes.

Okay... so I’ve mentioned a few negative things about the film but, let me fill you in on what else this movie is.

Well, disappointed as I was at the direction this movie took, I’d have to say you need to cut this movie some slack and see it regardless because, in terms of the production design and the beautiful compositions that fill the screen for the next fifty or so minutes of the film, after the character’s camera has been destroyed, [REC]: Genesis is one of the most beautiful, visually stunning movies I’ve seen in a while. I was absolutely gobsmacked by the sheer artistry and talent in this one. Bearing in mind that there are some truly gory sequences and some grim irony pushed to the forefront of this movie (love the hearing aid gag), it’s amazing how gorgeous and inspired the mise-en-scene (bar the music) is. If you’re a fan of well crafted movies in general, whether they be horror films or not (and let’s face it, generally they’re not), then you owe it to yourself to get hip-deep in the gore and see just how good looking this movie experience is.

The acting in this one is first rate, as it is in all the movies in this series, but once the film breaks free of it’s original aesthetic, the director also finds time to throw in some comedy moments which were more subtle, or at least less obvious, than they have been in the past.

The downside of having such a well shot, beautiful film, however, is that, unlike the first two movies in the franchise which were a rarity for being zombie movies which were actually scary for a change, as opposed to just being body count movies, [REC]: Genesis fails in the one thing which you really needed it to be to live up to the reputation of the first two... it just isn’t frightening!

Not that it really matters these days. No great worries. Horror films aren’t usually that scary at all, only the rare handful of scary movies live up to the scare implied by their genre. And unfortunately, [REC]: Genesis isn’t one of them. However, as I said, it’s got an awful lot going for it in terms of the overall look of the film and, with the added bouts of light comedy touches and grim irony to be found here, there’s an awful lot to offer fans of cinema, especially horror cinema, in this one.

There are, to be fair, a lot of cliché moments added to the mix too and the film is, I’m afraid to say, quite obvious about where it’s going to be going next from scene to scene. This is something that I think a lot of people will find kinda off-putting but if you soldier on through it, and it’s not a hard thing to do with such sumptuous photography, then you might find yourself bowled over by the film at a somewhat technical level. In terms of being a well made, fairly memorable horror movie, this one passes with flying colours... and when I say flying colours I mean red with flying body parts, obviously. Genre fans should love this if, unlike me, they’re not too attached to the previous installments and will possibly hail this movie as 2012’s horror masterpiece and, even I, was very taken with it... certainly enough to recommend to my readers, although you’ll need to watch the first two parts to understand what’s really going on in this one and why the infected act like they do at some points in the narrative.

I just wish it had the visceral power of the first two movies though.