{"id":99617,"date":"2017-10-13T20:26:22","date_gmt":"2017-10-13T19:26:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/?p=99617"},"modified":"2017-10-13T20:34:43","modified_gmt":"2017-10-13T19:34:43","slug":"veronica-lff-film-review-coming-of-age-chiller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/reviews\/veronica-lff-film-review-coming-of-age-chiller\/","title":{"rendered":"Ver\u00f3nica LFF film review: coming-of-age chiller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Not to be confused with Carlos Algara and Alejandro Martinez-Beltran&#8217;s Mexican film of the same name, <em><b>Ver\u00f3nica <\/b><\/em>is, like its director Paco Plaza&#8217;s previous<em> <b>[REC] <\/b><\/em>and <em><b>[REC] 2<\/b><\/em>, set mostly in a Spanish metropolitan apartment building where something diabolical finds a way in. There, 15-year-old Ver\u00f3nica (Sandra Escacena, in an impressive big-screen debut) is left to look after her three younger siblings (Bruna Gonz\u00e1lez, Claudia Placer, Iv\u00e1n Chavero, all excellent) in the absence of their dead father and overworked mother. Hoping to contact dad, Ver\u00f3nica experiments with a Ouija board during a solar eclipse at roughly the same time that she gets her first period, and then finds herself in conflict with the demonic presence that she has conjured.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"> Said to be based on a 1991 incident uniquely classified by Madrid police as supernatural, the generic if well-crafted <em><b>Ver\u00f3nica <\/b><\/em>opens near its end, with a frantic call to emergency services from the teenager, and so comes front-loaded with a doom-laden narrative trajectory. From there it winds back to Ver\u00f3nica&#8217;s Ouija s\u00e9ance three days earlier, and invites us to experience Ver\u00f3nica&#8217;s desperate attempts to protect her family at a time when unresolved grief about her father, a Catholic upbringing and the rush of adolescence converge to make her life hell. Plaza evokes the intrusive spirit through <b>Nosferatu<\/b>-like shadows on the wall, Ver\u00f3nica&#8217;s terrifying nightmares, mirror play, half-seen figures that emerge from the darkness (or the mattress) &#8211; and some uncanny in-camera effects that mess with perspective and chronology. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"> The film ultimately favours the paranormal &#8211; yet Plaza still slyly insinuates an alternative explanation, rooted in the protagonist&#8217;s psychosexual unravelling. This reading is subtly aided by the casting of Ana Torrent as the children&#8217;s mother, given that Torrent&#8217;s breakout r\u00f4le, in Victor Erice&#8217;s <b>Spirit of the Beehive <\/b>(1973), was precisely as an impressionable girl coming of age in a confusion of fantasy and reality.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Paco Plaza&#8217;s Ver\u00f3nica conjures the spirit of a 1991 possession case<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":99619,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"quote","meta":{"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":""},"categories":[2615,8],"tags":[5821],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/VERONICA_glowing-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/99619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scifinow.co.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}