Daily Times

Spanish director Paco Plaza’s film Veronica was silently released on Netflix earlier this month and not only did it make its way into ‘trending’ list on Netflix, it’s also in the buzz as a lot has been said about the movie including the claim that this is potentially the scariest film of all times and that people are shutting it down in the middle. Yeah, I’d say.

I took it upon myself to see what the hype was about. I finally watched the movie and decided to write what I thought of it. It’s true I wasn’t able to sit through the film and I turned it off… after 5 minutes the first time I tried to watch it. And then the second time and then same happened when I tried to watch it for the third time. But, before you jump the guns, I have to tell you that I turned it off minutes after it started each time not because I got scared but because it failed to catch my attention. I admit it could be because the film was in Spanish and I had to make that effort to stare at subtitles. I know I shouldn’t hold this against the film but it’s just that I didn’t want my eyes to be staring the subtitles instead of all the thrill unfolding.

As the film starts, it says it’s based on a police report of the same 1991 incident and then shows the events that took place in span of three days starting the day Veronica tries to make contact with her dead father using an Ouija board with the help of two of her friends.

This is followed by bizarre and creepy 70 minutes or more and one gets to see everything the recipe of a typical horror movie has; Catholic school, a weird and bad-ass cerebrate-smoking nun who is blind but can see things, demonic possession, Viking symbols of protection and invocation, thriller and suspense.

Not just any other haunted house and demon possession story though. It also incorporates the dark myths surrounding solar eclipse at the time when people believed the eclipse to be the reflection of the dark events taking place on earth.

Some of the other themes the film captures are sexual obsession, troubled childhood and burden-ridden coming of age.

The story is loosely – and I mean very loosely – based on a 1991 incident involving Estefania Gutierrez Lazaro, a Spanish teen girl who died under mysterious circumstances after episodes of epilepsy and what her family believed to be ‘demonic possession’.

Veronica played by Sandra Escacena is the protagonist who has to fill the void of absent parents and be there for 3 younger siblings; her father is dead and mother is always away for work. Like Lazaro, Veronica after discovering marks on her body is convinced of the demonic presence and its intent to harm her siblings. She takes it upon herself to play the role of a parent for her younger siblings and protect them.

The door that Veronica opened by messing with the Ouija board resulted in a creepy featureless and dark creature that haunts the house both as a shadow and a physical entity.

Veronica then takes it upon herself to do what she can to close the door and it is then followed by sheer anxiety and stress for the viewer.

Verdict: It’s definitely not the scariest movie ever made. For me, it didn’t live up to the hype either. It does, however, make you cringe with stress and fear. It will also leave you emotionally attach with the heroine.

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The writer is the Digital Editor, Daily Times and can be reached at me@farhanjanjua.com. He tweets and instagrams @FarhanJanjua