Veronica (2017) - Review
Originally published April, 2018About a decade ago, when horror movies were making tons of money off cinema verite style, or found-footage stories, there was a Spanish-made film called REC. REC had something of a popular cult following and found a great deal of success in Spain, among other countries. This would later be remade into an English-speaking movie known as Quarantine to reach the American audiences unwilling to read subtitles. While the tradition of remaking foreign films for American audiences is likely never to go away, streaming services, and the internet in general, have made people more receptive to foreign films, especially horror. So, for the time being, there's no American remake of Veronica, the latest film from the director/writer of REC, Paco Plaza. Having watched it on a streaming service myself, I can come up with a few reasons as to why that may not happen.
I have seen this movie's name pop up on multiple "the scariest movies available for streaming" lists lately. It's also been touted as a really good, tense horror movie with a significant pedigree behind it. However, I can't really agree that it deserves to be on any "best" or "scariest" lists, unless we're talking "best Ouija board horror movies," or "best movies that operate with a formula," or "best movies you're certain to have seen before in one way or another." If you haven't caught the hint, I'm saying that there's not going to likely be a remake of this movie because it's not original enough to be remade. The best parts of this movie are due to the talents of the people involved, not the plot or something that would benefit from being redone by someone else. Besides, there are countless other horror movies that mimic Veronica in a way that practically make it the equivalent of a Spanish remake of everything else. Does that make it a bad movie? Not necessarily, but it doesn't really deserve all the praise it's getting either. Regardless, I was just glad it wasn't a found-footage film.
Pros
It has a few good, creepy moments
Figures lurking in the background of quiet shots are effective
Well-acted by everyone, including the children
Production value is higher than you'd expect
Cons
Premise is pretty stale, being a Ouija board movie
There's a lot of tension slowly built up over time, but not much happens over the course of the film
The big climax at the end that was set up from the beginning doesn't pay off
Plot & Thoughts
Veronica is an angsty teenage girl in Spain with an interest in the occult. She acts as a surrogate mother to her 3 younger siblings while their actual mother is at work, 20 hours a day. Her father died some years back and she's been having to live the unfulfilling life of permanent babysitter ever since. Suddenly, she starts having nightmares, her siblings are getting hurt in mysterious ways, and she keeps seeing figures in the dark that might be haunting her. How could this have suddenly happened? With a Ouija board, of course!
I've never played with a Ouija board, but having watched enough terrible movies that use it as the core cause for a character's ultimate demise, I feel familiar enough to know what you should and should not do with it. First, don't use one. Second, if you do use one, always remember to say "goodbye" to whomever you think you're talking to, because, apparently, that's like leaving the front door open for some evil spirit to come in and track dirt all over your home. Every one of these Ouija board movies I have seen has always led to the same sort of premise: someone plays with it, asks a few questions, then neglects to say "goodbye." Veronica is no different as the titular character makes the same mistake with her disloyal high school friends in the unsupervised basement of their school, where a creepy blind nun occasionally comes to smoke. The girls are unwittingly playing with the board during a solar eclipse, Veronica tries to talk to her dead dad, they get distracted, she fails to say "adios" and then some Exorcist crap starts happening to her.
Again, this all doesn't make Veronica a bad movie, just an uninspired and unoriginal one. It's all very stale and formulaic, down to the ever essential harbinger of doom character (the blind nun) who has to inform Veronica how totally screwed she is. Its twists are all pretty well-telegraphed, so there's no real surprise to be had. The moments that are the most horrific are just nightmares that you have to expect in a movie like this. The best moments are when everything goes quiet and you can start looking for the ominous shadow standing in the background, or in the blurry reflection of a television. Veronica does well when it's just trying to be creepy in a quiet and subtle way, as that seems to be the filmmakers' strength in the genre.
By the time the movie is over, it builds and climaxes in a predictable and unsatisfying way that shows us too much and ends up being devoid of much effective tension or horror. However, I still must hand it to the actors involved, because the failings of this movie were due in no part to their ability to act. The girl who plays Veronica was perfectly capable, and the younger siblings, despite their ages, all did decent jobs playing up the drama. Hopefully, they'll have a strong career in more interesting films in the future.
TL;DR (Conclusion)
Veronica is a film that is bogged down by its premise. There are some good moments sprinkled throughout, the acting is surprisingly good for a young cast, and the production quality is higher than you expect for a crappy Ouija board movie. But it is still a Ouija board horror movie. So if you've already seen one, you've practically watched Veronica. That being said, Veronica is the best Ouija board horror movie I've seen, to date. That's not a high bar to overcome, but it was still watchable.
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