I wasn't able to see the last half hour so am unable to comment on the whole of this Spanish production. Six years ago, the young daughter of Emma Vilarasau disappeared, leading to the break up of her marriage. A skeleton resembling the daughter's turns up. Then, out of nowhere, a phone call from the girl begging her for help and directing her to a spot that will prove she knows something. The spot turns up a shoe.
With no one else to turn to, Vilarasau corners the cop who originally handled the case, Karra Elejalde. Together they try to unravel the mystery of the child's death -- or at least her disappearance. As in so many procedurals, the pursuit takes them into the history of sadism, the occult, the concentration camps, the Nazis, the insane, the disfigured, the decomposing, and the horrors of twelve-tone music.
It's difficult to assess the thing. The photography and musical score are okay. The acting is quite good -- both Vilarasau and Elejalde are middle aged and far from Hollywood's idea of what's handsome. They look like ordinary people who might be pushing carts through a supermarket towards the packaged macaroni and cheese.
At one point, Elejalde wakes from a nightmare and does NOT thrust his terrified face into the camera. One more cliché avoided. Good for them. They need a respite from those stereotypical scenes -- the cop turning over his shield, the newspaper reporter fired for following his own story, the pinned hand groping for the weapon.
But the editor may have been on some sort of psychedelic because those nightmares are doozies, full of nanosecond images and noises like ripping paper and fuse boxes blowing up. It's really a tiresome nuisance.
The plot begins with promise, although the "call from the supposedly dead" is a hoary device. Still, it could lead anywhere, maybe somewhere different. But it doesn't. It leads us through "The Omen," "The Silence of the Lambs" because there's an insane prisoner who speaks to the mother in riddles, a couple of "Twilight Zone" episodes, and from any generic horror movie.
So far, that is. It's possible that the ending pulls it all together and suddenly all the familiar conceits are revealed as relevant.
With no one else to turn to, Vilarasau corners the cop who originally handled the case, Karra Elejalde. Together they try to unravel the mystery of the child's death -- or at least her disappearance. As in so many procedurals, the pursuit takes them into the history of sadism, the occult, the concentration camps, the Nazis, the insane, the disfigured, the decomposing, and the horrors of twelve-tone music.
It's difficult to assess the thing. The photography and musical score are okay. The acting is quite good -- both Vilarasau and Elejalde are middle aged and far from Hollywood's idea of what's handsome. They look like ordinary people who might be pushing carts through a supermarket towards the packaged macaroni and cheese.
At one point, Elejalde wakes from a nightmare and does NOT thrust his terrified face into the camera. One more cliché avoided. Good for them. They need a respite from those stereotypical scenes -- the cop turning over his shield, the newspaper reporter fired for following his own story, the pinned hand groping for the weapon.
But the editor may have been on some sort of psychedelic because those nightmares are doozies, full of nanosecond images and noises like ripping paper and fuse boxes blowing up. It's really a tiresome nuisance.
The plot begins with promise, although the "call from the supposedly dead" is a hoary device. Still, it could lead anywhere, maybe somewhere different. But it doesn't. It leads us through "The Omen," "The Silence of the Lambs" because there's an insane prisoner who speaks to the mother in riddles, a couple of "Twilight Zone" episodes, and from any generic horror movie.
So far, that is. It's possible that the ending pulls it all together and suddenly all the familiar conceits are revealed as relevant.