After performing a séance with her friends, a teenage girl
and her siblings are plagued by a malevolent spirit. HORROR
|
Verónica (2017)Directed by Paco Plaza
Written by Paco Plaza and Fernando Navarro Starring Sandra Escacena, Bruna González, Claudia Placer, Iván Chavero, Ana Torrent, Ángela Fabián, Consuelo Trujillo |
When Veronica first landed on Netflix, the reviews were staggeringly positive. There were people saying it was so damn scary that they couldn't finish it. I remember seeing ads for it on Facebook day in and day out, all of them declaring Veronica "the scariest movie ever made." That's a dangerous game. A declaration like that just backs the film into a corner. Very few horror films can deliver on that promise. And while I thought Veronica was good and certainly creepy, it was a far cry from the scariest movie ever made.
To make things extra creepy, it's based on a true story. An actual true story, complete with witnesses and police reports. The events depicted in this film occurred in Madrid in 1991 after a teenage girl and her friends performed a séance with a Ouija board. In the film, the ritual is performed under an eclipse, which I guess enhances the power of darkness. Veronica (Escacena) starts experiencing terrifying shit, like moving shadows and dark figures attacking her siblings. She realizes the only way to stop it is to duplicate the séance and do it right this time, but that seems to just make things worse. The film's ending is incredibly dark and the investigation into the true story just raises so many terrifying questions. When it comes to Veronica, ignore everyone's insane declarations of this film's immortality in the annals of horror movie history. It's a good watch, but it's not making hair turn white. So let's just slow down. There's a reason the hype died down pretty quick back in 2017. Regardless, on its own, it's a solid ghost movie that had me shivering a few times. |