SISTER DEATH/ HERMANA MUERTE

Spain, 2023, 91 minutes, Colour.

Aria Bedmar, Maru Vladivielso, Luisa Merelas, Chelo Vivares, Sar Roch, Almudena Amor, Consuela Trujillo.

Directed by Paco Plaza.

Writer-director, Paco Plaza, has a strong reputation for films which include horror touches, horror themes. He was responsible for the Rec franchise.

In 2017, he wrote and directed Veronica, set in 1991, a 15-year-old girl in a Madrid school, caring for three younger siblings, her father dead and missing him, her mother always at work. At the core of the film is Veronica is longing for her father, having a session with a Ouija board with her school friends, horror consequences.

However, while the nuns teaching at the school are in modern dress, there is a very elderly sister, old-style habit, blind, looking sinister, with the nickname from the girls, Sister Death.

This drama, popular and with critical acclaim, is a prequel, focusing on a young nun in 1949, Sister Narcisa – who, ultimately will be seen in the final sequence, 1991, as Sister Death, played by the previous actress, Consuela Trujillo. Which means that this is a prequel to Veronica.

The film opens in 1939, snippets of black-and-white photography, a visionary, pious crowds, the little girl holding up a cross. The action then moves to 1949, memories of the Civil War with bullet holes in the convent walls, the convent now catering to educate young girls. Sister Narcisa arrives, very young, sweet, the touch of the angelic, perfectly embodied by Aria Bedmar. She is welcomed by ebullient superior and by the more restrained, Sister Julia. She is to teach the girls – with a class on eclipses which reminds audiences of the classes on eclipses in Veronica.

However, there is something sinister in her room, a sense of another presence, the chair falling, a wall sketch of the gallows. The girls are fidgety in class and the suggestion that one of them sees an apparition of a girl. The superior is cheery, Sister Julia becoming stern, disciplining the girls.

But, as in Veronica, the director relies on nightmares for communicating the horror, particularly graphic in three dreams by Sister Narcisa, forced to eat treats which turn into eyeballs, being smothered by the veil for her profession ceremony, finally a confrontation with a mysterious dead sister.

There are further complications with the young girl who is seeing the apparition, her death, Sister Narcisa leaving, returning, caught up with the visual explanations of what had happened in the past, rampaging soldiers during the Civil War, the pregnancy of the mysterious none, and Sister Narcisa being the visionary.

There is an epilogue in 1991, Sister Narcisa, blind because of her experiences in the past, present in the school, Veronica in the class.

1. The title, expectations, content and nuns, Catholic themes, horror?
2. The film is a prequel to the 2018 film, Veronica? The story of Sister Narcisa?
3. The prologue, the black-and-white photography, handheld, 1939, the apparitions, the visionary, the little girl and her cross, the crowds?
4. 10 years later, the convent, reopened, for the training of girls, the bullet holes in the walls, memories of the war? The atmosphere of the convent? Surface normal?
5. Narcisa, her age, in temporary vows, arriving at the convent, her appointment, her case, meeting Sister Julia, the introduction to the Superior, the welcome, her room, her tasks, in the classroom? A surprise about final vows?
6. Narcisa, her mysterious background, her being the visionary? The welcome to the convent? Her room, the noises, the falling chair, the noose sketch? Her searching? Going to the basement, the relics, the hand of St Martha? Sinister aspects?
7. The classroom, the girls, not responding, rose, the reference to the Girl? The sketch of the hanging and its reappearing? Rosa, seeing the Girl, fear of the name being written on the board, see the death? The return to seeming ordinariness, the class, the eclipse, the response of the girls, the dormitory, Narcisa and teaching the dancing?
8. The horror touches, via Narcisa’s nightmares, the cook, the eyes, the treats, chewing, vomiting, blood? The measurements for her profession dress, the veil, her being strangled? The final nightmares concerning Sister Socorro? The story of Sister Ines and her becoming a victim?
9. Narcisa, wanting to leave, Rosa and her death, the return?
10. The contingent mysterious behaviour, the box in Narcisa’s room, Rosa and the sisters, the hair in the bath, the mystery? The photos? Absent in the album? Sister Socorro?
11. The buildup to the climax, Narcisa and investigations, hearing presence, sister Socorro coming to her, the exchange of flowers, the memories of the past, sister Julia in the past, the present, the Superior, sister Socorro and the child, the impact of the war, the child in the bath, hitting its head, death? Sister Socorro hanging herself?
12. Narcisa being possessed by Sister Socorro, the reversal of the death, the confrontation was a two elderly nuns, the furniture falling on Julia, the Superior in the bath? Narcisa and her realisation of who she was? Surviving? Socorro as her mother?
13. The transition to 1991, Veronica, the classroom, the enthusiastic none, the introduction of Sister Death, blind, old? And the realisation that this film was a prequel to Veronica?