‘The Communion Girl’: a good Spanish slasher with all the good and bad of an American franchise

Warner is strongly committed to the Spanish terror and has surrounded itself with a highly specialized team for this. The executive producer of the saga'[REC]’ and screenwriter of ‘While you sleep’, Alberto Marini, responded to the commission to present a story about the urban legend of ‘The girl of the communion’ together with the director of the film, Víctor García. Of the development of the whole story A young woman from the 80s has recently moved to a small town where a cursed communion doll lives one of the most important screenwriters of recent Spanish cinema has been commissioned. After adapting the intriguing ‘The Innocent’ and ‘The Crooked Lines of God’, Guillem Clua fully embraces this time supernatural terror in another proposal that involves as much as the previous ones, although not as transcending as them.

Not so supernatural rural horror

Despite what this approach and its promotion suggest, ‘La Niña de la Comunión’ is not engaged in religious terror but in rural terror. The team decided to tiptoe all the symbolic potential of Catholicism and reduce it to a mere context that seems vastly wasted and used solely for promotion. Who better than us to terrorize a tradition so rooted in Spain instead of following foreign formulas? The Spanish tone is deeply represented in that important character which is the people (deliberately undetermined in the film, Corbera d’Ebre in reality). Every street so recognizable by Spanish spectators becomes part of the slasher game: the church, the ruins, the squares, even the arcades or the typical street of low houses with garages. It is noted that they are not forced or unreal decorations.

This small town of Tarragona, in which the team has had to intervene so little, facilitates the plausibility of the Spanish context of the eighties so well recreated without being redundant. Instead of pulling off your typical radio banter and song, the dialogue briefly but harshly reflects on the machismo and classism of the era, and there’s even space to briefly reflect on the concern about the rise of drugs on the Bacalao route.

With the same deep but subtle brush, their interpretations draw a stupendous cast that flees from extremes. The parents of the protagonists shine in every shot and conversation almost as much as the two best supporting characters in the film: the comic and very dramatic couple formed by Aina Quiñones and Carlos Oviedo.. For her part, Carla Campra (“Fair: The Darkest Light”) proves more than prepared after a sizable career at age 23 to star in a big movie like this, whether you have to talk or scream. In general, no teenager/boy squeaks, and therefore the film can afford to take itself seriously both in its context and in its dread.

a good formula

While in context it flees stereotypes, ‘La Niña de la Comunión’ embraces them with dread. It seems that the screenwriter adapts very well to whatever is asked of him, more intellectual or more commercial as in this case. The terrifying adventure is full of well-known clichés and situations with no greater depth than pure entertainment. But and how well it does, to the point of having nothing to envy to the teen terror made in the USA. Of course, by renouncing the use of religion, Fear doesn’t feel quite as Spanish and creepy as it does in the outstanding ‘Cerdita’, and that ultimately ends up playing against him. Instead of increasing the resolution as the “Malasaña 32” grand tour did, the film leaves a bad taste in the mouth for a frustrating and inexplicable ending. The treacherous paradox comes at the last moment when trying to embrace the supernatural to affect and secure the sequel, when all the development wanted to be based more on the rural, dramatic and contextual than on the religious.

It is best to forget the destination and be left with an intense journey towards it. While nothing is groundbreaking, everything works like a shot. Seasoned Víctor García follows the slasher formula to the letter with hilarious ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’-esque dream attacks and an attempted pacing of individual deaths a la ‘Final Destination’. The entertainment is what works the most, with very interesting scenes where you play with a lot of jumpscare and end up with very creative deaths or threats.. Beyond these words, the visual invoice in which they move is truly compliant: terror is not in the background, all the protagonists end up in the mud (literally and metaphorically) and everything can also be seen very clearly. Big mention for spectacular makeup and digital effects work worthy of any standard film in the genre.

For better or for worse, ‘The Girl from Communion’ is not one of those horrors that deceive (except in the so unused part about communion): it does not pretend to be or sell itself as a horror elevated to A24 or with greater depth, such as ‘ Veronica’. AND it remains very well run light entertainment. For that achievement, we will definitely buy possible future sequels. But they should have been, and they’re careful not to be so clumsy when it comes to building universes. With the DC Universe, the paradox of a franchise that died before being born focus more on those open fringes than on the cold identity that the film seemed to have with its own mythology at the beginningin theaters from 10 February.

Note:6.

The best: Its ambition to function as a great American slasher while maintaining the Spanish brand. Aina quinones.

Worse: The unsatisfactory final resolution.