VERONICA
Spain, 2017, 103 minutes, Colour.
Sandra Escacena, Bruna Gonzalez, Claudia Placer,Ivan Chavero, Ana Torrent, Consuelo Trujillo.
Directed by Paco Plaza.
Spanish writer-director, Paco Plaza, has been interested in eerie themes, especially in his series, Rec.
This time he goes to Madrid, 1991, a family, working mother (played by former child star, Ana Torrent, Spirit of the Beehive, Cria Cuervos), Veronica, aged 15, who misses her dead father, and three younger children, two little girls and the bespectacled, wide-eyed little boy.
The children go to a Catholic school, and a nun in more contemporary habit giving a class on a forthcoming eclipse which everybody watches. However, she introduces and a very elderly nun, blind, gaunt, in an old habit, Sister Narcisa whom the children nickname as Sister Death. She will reappear influencing Veronica.
But the key to the film is Veronica’s having a Ouija board and persuading two of her school friends to play with the board, to contact her father, while everybody else is watching the eclipse. There are some disturbing moments, Veronica collapsing. She continues to be preoccupied with the Ouija board which is split, her looking up magazines to get more information, painting of Viking symbolic image. She is also challenged by Sister Death, as well as her mother.
Eventually, there is ghostly presence, sinister and threatening, the little girls having to be evacuated from the house, the capturing of the little boy then his rescue, Veronica confronting the strange presence and cutting her throat.
The film opens with the police arriving and ends with the inspector writing his report, allegedly the film based on this report.
Five years later, Paco Plaza took the theme of Sister Death, Sister Narcisa, and made a prequel with a history of the elderly nun, its final scene back in the classroom in 1991.
- Spanish horror? Catholic traditions? Ouija board and contact with the dead? Supernatural consequences?
- Madrid, the city, apartments, restaurants, school, convent? The musical score?
- The opening, the dead, the police, atmosphere, flashbacks? The screenplay allegedly from the detectives notes? The end, his writing, his disappearing, the police backing out? Sinister?
- The title, the focus on Veronica, aged 15, the family, the death of her father, memories, the photo, the pizza? Wanting to contact him? The two little girls, characters, age, phone communication, creative play? The little boy, his eyes, the glasses? Their mother, busy, Veronica happy to take responsibility?
- The background of the eclipse, the nun and the classes, needed to bring the negatives to see the eclipse? The excitement of the children? On the roof? Veronica and Rosa, meeting Diana, the going to the basement, Veronica with the Ouija board, the experience, eerie, the effect on Veronica, the other two girls leaving? Veronica taking the Ouija board, broken, hiding under the bed? Her research of the magazines, the diagram with the Viking signs, discovering that the ceremony had to be complete, the farewell?
- Veronica, the effect, her encounter with Sister Death, smoking, talking, memories, teaching, seeing without her eyes? Sister Death in the basement, the final talk with Veronica, the advice?
- The device of nightmares, Veronica, graphic, the presence in the house, choking her sister, sinister experiences? Waking?
- Veronica and the responsibility for the children, taking them to school, their mother? Veronica going to the restaurant, wanting to communicate? The leftovers for the meal? At home?
- Veronica, her fears, the presence in the house, gathering the children into a room? The bizarre behaviour, her mother’s return, denials?
- The buildup to the combination, Veronica with the Ouija board, the presence in the house, her ringing the police, their arriving, the little girls out of the house, with their mother, the little boy, taken by the presence, in the cupboard, the final experience of Veronica, slashing her throat?
- Her body taken out, the mother with the children, the police and its effect?
