Netflix seems to have me all figured out, as every time I log in, it’s spitting some new horror film at me. Because of my interest in The Ritual, the Netflix horror film about friends lost in a Blair Witch-like wood, the streaming service just recommended I watch Veronica, a just-added Spanish horror film that is not a Netflix original, but one it recently got the rights to, and is prominently advertising on its home page.
Veronica caught my interest because it’s a film by Paco Plaza, who directed [REC], a great take on the found-footage genre, and one of the most terrifying zombie films I’ve ever seen. It was later adapted into the less-good Quarantine for American audiences, but [REC] remains a genre staple. I was hopeful that Veronica would also be an instant classic as a result.
It’s…more of a mixed bag.
The film is reviewing pretty well. It’s not another Netflix bomb the way we’ve seen with so many other of their featured films lately (and it’s not technically a Netflix original). It has a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, but that’s only with 13 reviews counted. If I was scoring the movie myself I’d probably give it a 6 out of 10, “fresh,” but not exactly stunning.
Veronica tells the story of a girl, Veronica, who is tasked with shepherding her younger siblings, two sisters and a brother, due to her mom working late hours at a bar and sleeping all day, doing essentially nothing to parent the children other than provide an income.
Veronica gets the idea in her head that she and her other ninth grade friends should perform a séance during an eclipse at school with the goal of speaking to her dead father. The séance works, too well, of course, and what Veronica lets out is something dark that starts haunting her and her family as she desperately tries to put the genie back in the bottle.
I’ll stop right here and say that I was pretty disappointed to see the structure of this storyline. I am beyond tired of the Ouija board being used in horror movies, and even more tired of the turn that “you summoned something DARK instead of your dead family member!” which literally seems to happen 100% of the time. I was hoping for a more original base here, but instead the central idea is rather tired, and does not feel like a fresh spin on the genre.
The best part of the film are its performances. Veronica herself, Sandra Escacena, is extremely good here, and without her the film wouldn’t be half of what it is. I was also genuinely impressed by the acting of all three of her younger siblings, as often in horror movies like this one, child actors can prove problematic, but here they’re all extremely convincing. It’s a bunch of great performances trapped instead a somewhat lackluster central story.
I constantly felt like I was missing some larger meaning in the movie. There are all these references to Veronica’s transition into womanhood, as at 15 she hasn’t had her first period, which the school nurse remarks as unusual. She eventually gets it, but it seems like an event not really tied into much else about the haunting. I kept trying to figure out if perhaps there had been some sort of abuse between her dad and her when he was alive, but by the end, it really didn’t seem like that was the case, and the entire dynamic was just confusing. In the film’s most horrifying sequence, Veronica has a nightmare that her little siblings are literally eating her alive, representing how overwhelmed she feels by constantly having to mother them, which ties into the ultimate resolution of the film.
Spoilers follow now to discuss the end. If you like what you’ve heard so far, go watch. Otherwise, or if you’ve seen it, press on.
The final twist of the film, if you can call it that, is that the house isn’t being haunted by an outside presence, but an inside one. As in, the demonic spirit has possessed Veronica herself, and she’s the one terrorizing her family.
This…doesn’t really make that much sense, nor is that much of a shock. To this point, we had already seen a sequence where Veronica sees a shadowy hand reaching toward her little sister, but then it’s her choking her sister briefly as she wakes up. Or later in the film, a blind nun who can “see death” starts performing a mini-exorcism on the spot, commanding the thing to leave Veronica’s body, so when the reveal occurs, it’s kind of just like…well of course that’s what’s happening.
It also makes many of the sequences of the film confusing. Veronica is constantly shown shielding her siblings from a demonic presence, yet they never actually seem scared of her specifically. Only her little brother seems to indicate that he is literally seeing her transform into a demon, but even then it’s only sporadically, and if you try to go back and replay the various horror sequences in your mind, the Veronica-is-the-real-demon answer only seems like it makes sense about half the time.
I came away from Veronica somewhat disappointed. I had heard hyperbolic headlines about how “Netflix has a new horror movie so scary people are turning it off!” but I didn’t find that to be true, and outside of a collection of great performances from young actors, there wasn’t all that much else about the film I found terribly compelling, given its competition in the genre. I liked The Ritual a lot more than this, for instance, as I think that actually did some innovative things with the “spooky thing in the woods” concept. Veronica does not really do anything neat with the “haunted Ouija demon” idea, even with a last minute attempt at a twist.
That’s my take, but feel free to disagree. Veronica is streaming now.
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