Fake News Invades the Horror Genre
The media have been tripping over themselves to anoint Spanish horror film Veronica, the “scariest movie ever.” The Mirror said it, quoting no one in particular. NME repeated it. The Telegraph paraphrased it. Finally, Insider reported that Veronica was so scary, viewers were “turning it off halfway through.”
And while Veronica is decidedly neither the scariest movie ever, nor even the scariest one on Netflix, the Insider’s take at least makes sense. The movie only decides to get creepy about halfway through.
Until then, we observe teenaged Veronica’s sad life in a bad part of Madrid – missing her dead father, caring for her siblings in the absence of her mother (who works the night shift), sneaking off with her friends at school to play with a Ouija board (which works as promised). The whole is punctuated by John Carpenter-ish musical cues that haphazardly spring to life during dull moments, as if the director were concerned that we might forget what we’re watching.
And that fear is not unfounded. The first 40 minutes of this movie are such a slow burn, the thing nearly extinguishes completely. Certainly not helping matters is that everything in Madrid seems to be either brown or yellow, which makes Veronica’s pre-Ouija world about as appealing as a terry cloth sweater vest. When shadowy figures being prowling her bedroom at night, they constitute a real upgrade – at least in set design.
Part of the fuss over Veronica is that it purportedly comes from a true story. However, further examination reveals that the true events teased in online clickbait are really just a police report from 1992 describing a young woman’s sudden death as “inexplicable.”
Why even bother with a pre-text so flimsy? Were they simply looking for an excuse to set the movie during the 1990s? And to what end? Our suspicion is that the filmmakers needed a hook to liven up the long sections of the movie in between scares. Sadly, it doesn’t work too well – a shame, because when Veronica does decide to scare us, it succeeds.
We cringe and squint as tall shadows appear in doorways or reach out to touch Veronica in her sleep. You might need a nightlight when all is said and done. Had the filmmakers been able to match their talent for chills with a better overarching narrative, they might have actually ended up with a solid bid for ‘scariest movie ever.’
...seen on Netflix.