‘The Wailing’: San Sebastian Review

Dir. Pedro Martín-Calero. Spain/Argentina/France 2024. 107mins

Dying looms over the younger in Spanish-language frightener The Wailing. That’s nothing uncommon in horror; what’s contemporary about this debut from director Pedro Martín-Calero is the stylistic precision and modernist cool with which the looming is calibrated. To not be confused with the 2016 Korean movie of the identical title, this Wailing is a cleverly constructed, visually honed, female-centred three-parter that attracts viewers into its labyrinth with absolute confidence – and even when it finally leads us to a predictable ending, that itself is a part of a satisfying variation on style tropes. Following the movie’s San Sebastián competitors debut, its eerieness ought to resonate approach past the Spanish-language market. 

A powerful feminist angle offers the movie a strong forex

Issues kick off with a wilfully disorienting intro laced with strobes and thunderous techno earlier than we attain the primary of three linked episodes, every with a separate younger protagonist. The primary, set in present-day Madrid, follows younger pupil Andrea (Exter Esposito, from TV sequence Elite and Jaume Balaguero’s chiller Venus). Her boyfriend Pau (Alex Monner) is away in Sydney, and as they communicate over their telephones and laptops – bold-face captions and icons in yellow monitoring their dialog on the display screen – he notices a mysterious determine lurking within the background of a video name. It seems to be a presence that may solely be seen when filmed – and whose baleful energy is aware of no geographic boundaries. 

Within the second half, the story jumps again a number of years to La Plata, Argentina, the place movie pupil Camila (Malena Villa) spots a mysterious, alluring younger lady on the street. Erotically fascinated, Camila stalks her, making her the unwitting topic of a documentary brief. The article of her affection is Marie (Mathilde Ollivier), a free spirit from France – however she too has the ominous presence hovering close to her. And in a 3rd half main straight on from Camila’s story, the meticulously managed suspense lastly erupts into all-out scares because the story strands converge round a determined Marie.

Co-written by the director and Rodrigo Sorogoyen collaborator Isabel Peña (The Beasts, TV sequence Riot Squad), this meticulously constructed narrative teases our expectations and perceptions. The dramatic execution is steely and super-controlled, Martín-Calero making ingenious use of house, particularly with cleverly seeded glimpses of a mysterious condominium, the locale for the movie’s climactic revelations. Every episode has a considerably completely different really feel, partly due to the usage of picture expertise from completely different eras – the omnipresent telephones and laptops of the Andrea part (with its implicit commentary a few technology’s unshakeable display screen dependancy), the older camcorder textures of Camila’s story. 

Within the Madrid section particularly, Martín-Calero and DoP Constanza Sandoval profit from claustrophobic areas and rectangles inside rectangles, whereas the La Plata part, which opens the story as much as broad daylight, isn’t any much less menacing; that is a kind of horror movies during which spacious, well-lit fashionable flats might be as ominous as any Outdated Darkish Home. And when the heroines do discover darkish areas, the usage of a pitch-black display screen ups the suspense very successfully – as do some daring deployments of near-total silence. 

Martín-Calero is thought for his adverts and music movies – notably for The Weeknd – and this assured debut ought to put him on the identical path to worldwide success as different latest Hispanic horror specialists. A powerful feminist angle offers the movie a strong forex (suffice to say, the menace right here is as a lot patriarchy as it’s demise), and the three younger leads are compelling in several methods – most impressively maybe, singer and actor Villa, whose Camila is a magnetic mixture of watchfulness, audacity and simmering need.