22/42
Follows child Emma on her journey to learn how to communicate with the spirit of a young girl, Uxoa, who has been trapped in a hermitage for centuries, so she tries to persuade Carol, a skeptical medium, to help her. Tense, terrifying, melancholic and suffocating fantasy thriller with hints of a ghost story. Supernatural thriller filled with spooky acts, thrills, chills and plenty of scares; however, some are confusing and unexplained, the reason for some frightening events is never fully explained. The film depicts a fictional story of social reality that plagues a small town. It opens with a seemingly historical prologue involving the plague, a chapel where the sick were corralled and a regiment of beaked birdmen, but this turns out to be a recreation of a parade as part of a small town’s annual festival, when the chapel thought to be haunted by little Usoa is briefly opened. It follows a young girl named Emma (Maia Zaitegi) on her journey to learn how to communicate with the spirit of a young girl, Uxoa, who has been trapped in a hermitage for centuries, so she tries to persuade Carol (Belén Rueda), a skeptical and fake medium, to help her. The latter bears literal scars from a childhood when her perhaps-real medium mother seemed more interested in a local girl’s ghost than her own daughter. This is a passable, passable film with many not-always-likable, deeply human and relatable protagonists. This is a haunted house film that packs a chilling horror punch and an eerie atmosphere when the menacing beings appear. A tense, mysterious film full of thrills, suspense, chills, red herrings, and scary twists. Step by step, the mystery begins to unfold until its surprising ending, resulting in a sentimental ghost story with serious and brooding undertones in the vein of The Orphanage or Pan’s Labyrinth, but with its own distinct female focus. It is an attractive drama whose interest diminishes as the effective abundance of its tiresome accumulation of supposedly terrifying elements increases. While Cerdita focuses on pure terror in La Ermita, there are several things that confirm Pereda as a key figure in the current genre of horror and fantasy. One is her frontal entry into genre cinema: she bets on fantasy without hesitation, adding some personal drama. It deflates as the filming progresses and prevents us from talking about a gem like Cerdita. Nevertheless, Pereda manages to make a more than worthy film, but inferior to the previous one. Pereda has a great eye for the gothic, savoring the trappings of Spanish horror, although she does not really make a horror film. It turned out to be an adequate and decent film, but nothing remarkable. Stars Belén Rueda giving a good performance in her usual style, she is an actress specialized in mystery and horror films, such as: The eyes of Julia, The orphanage, You will not sleep, During the storm, The Pact, Orbit 9 and The body. In fact, Belén Rueda is the closest thing Spain has to a horror heroine, or a ‘Scream Queen’, she pairs well with child prodigy Maia Zaitegi who evokes the young Ana Torrent in Cria Cuervos o El espiritu de la colmena (Spirit of the Beehive). The film was professionally directed by Carlota Pereda, who is clearly a talented writer and filmmaker. As a female drama with similar genre undertones, it is the second solid showcase for Pereda’s talent. Won 2023: Sitges Film Festival: Official Feature Film Section (out of competition) and 2023: Goya Awards (Spain): Nominated for Best Special Effects. His first film was the much better ¨Cerdita¨ which takes as its starting point the Goya winner for best short film of the same name by Carlota Pereda herself, winner of the Goya for best short film in 2018 and also starring Laura Galán. Rating: 5.5/10.
