THE WAILING (Review) – The Cliffhanger & Co Chronicles

SYNOPSIS: Something is stalking Andrea, but no one, not even her, knows what it is. Twenty years earlier, ten thousand kilometers away, the same presence terrified Marie. Camila was the only one who could understand what was happening to her, but no one believed her. Faced with this threat, all three heard the same moan.…

This is not the first time that a Spanish horror film has had the honor of appearing in the PIFFF program. Indeed in 2021, Veneciaphrenia (Alex de la Iglesia) had been presented out of competition. This year it’s the director Pedro Martín-Calero who came in person to present his first film to us The Wailing (The crying in Spanish), an open and fantastic feature film that uses a hermetic and disturbing story. The film opens with an introduction peppered with strobes and blaring techno, before arriving at the first of three linked episodes. Andrea, Camila et Marie are three women who live decades apart and on different continents, but they are united by the same unfathomable curse. The first of these episodes takes place in today’s Madrid, where we discover the young student Andrea (Ester Esposito) chatting through her phone with her boyfriend Pau (Alex Monner) who lives in Sydney. While this first episode is distressing on several levels, the second puts the terror (a little) aside to make way for voyeurism through the eyes of a film student, Camila (Malena Villa), who is fascinated by a mysterious young woman and decides to follow her while secretly filming her as a class project. The object of his affection is Marie (Mathilde Ollivier), a free spirit from France, but who is also surrounded by a threatening presence. And finally, the third story intervenes as an answer, a conclusion to the general mystery. Direct continuation of the 2nd part, it follows the story of Camilathe controlled suspense finally erupts into real scares as the story threads converge around a Marie desperate.

The script, signed Isabel Pena et Pedro Martín-Calero is a meticulously constructed story that tickles our expectations and our perceptions, it is a disturbing piece that oscillates between ambiguity and metaphor. The story does not seek coherence, but rather to reflect the uncertainty inherent in its themes: unexplained violence and persistent doubt. The film chooses to focus only on its three heroines and nothing else. This has advantages, we are fully concerned by their concerns, we feel their anxieties, but just like them, we spend our time asking questions that remain unanswered. By focusing on these three people, the film forgets to explain them to us, or at least to give us some ideas to sink our teeth into. For example, who is responsible for all of this, who are the people (or people) we see in the photos and videos, or quite simply, why them? The choice of slow narration allows for introspection into the psychology of the characters, but it also helps create an atmosphere of confusion that can obscure the central message. Even the film’s ending is as unsettling as its approach, leaving the viewer without a clear conclusion. Despite this, the film has very successful moments of tension, thanks to its sound editing and its oppressive, immersive atmospheres, loaded with references to vulnerability and hidden violence.

Pedro Martín-Calero uses a glacial aesthetic, where everyday details acquire a threatening tone, especially in the Madrid segment, where, with the cinematographer Constanza Sandovalthey make the most of the claustrophobic spaces, while the section of The Silver opens the story to broad daylight, and remains no less threatening. This is one of those horror films where spacious, well-lit apartments can be as eerie as any old, dark house. The construction of the characters is another essential aspect, they are trapped in their routines and especially in their solitude.

The interpretations of our three young protagonists are convincing in different respects, Malena Villa et Mathilde Ollivier are dazzling, when Ester Expositowe can say that she does not choose the easy way. After the success of the series Elite she turned to genre cinema and it succeeded quite well for her. Before The wailing we saw him in Venus (Jaume Balagueró) as well as in the awesome Lost in the Night (Amat Escalante). For his first feature film, Pedro Martín-Calero offers us a different proposition in the Spanish cinematographic panorama, daring to break with conventions to tell a story where evil does not need a tangible form to be feared. Death threatens the young in this horror film with a stylistic precision and modernist freshness with which the threat is calibrated.