Películas para no dormir: Regreso a Moira

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Rating 3¾


Directed by Mateo Gil

Written by Mateo Gil and Igor Legarreta

Starring Juan José Ballesta, Jordi Dauder, Natalia Millán, David Arnaiz, Adrián Marin, José Ángel Egido, Miguel Rellán, Victoria Mora and Walter Prieto


Tomás (Jordi Dauder), a grey-haired man, perhaps in his sixties, is driving through mainland Europe back towards Spain and the small village where he grew up. He carries a Tarot card marked “Los Amentes” (The Lovers). He has flashbacks to the village over forty years earlier and a woman called Moira (Natalia Millán) who comes to live in a house up on the hill. The woman lives there alone with her cat and does not attend Mass. The region is suffering a severe drought and the suspicious local villagers come to believe she is a witch who consorts with the devil.

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One of the six films in the “Películas para no dormer” series (Films to Keep You Awake), ‘Regreso a Moira’ or ‘Spectre’, to give the film its English title, is the slowly unfolding story of a teenage boy, Tomás (played in his younger guise by Juan José Ballesta) who experiences his sexual awakening when he encounters the mysterious woman who has come to live outside his village. He becomes enchanted by her and she offers him a glimpse of an alternative life to the stifling traditions of the remote village he has grown up in, where everything revolves around the local Church. However, his jealousy grows stronger with each passing day, with tragic consequences.

The film explores the ingrained suspicions of people who fear anything they do not understand and see evil all around them. It also comments, indirectly, on the ways in which the landscape of Spain and the very fabric of life in the country has changed. The small remote village of forty years ago has long gone is now an inhospitable town relying on tourism to survive, with many faceless buildings in various stages of construction.

This is a quiet and beautiful film, a doomed love story, with an almost dreamlike quality.

Review posted 9 April 2009



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Películas para no dormir: La culpa

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Rating 3½


Directed by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador

Written by Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, based on a story by Luis Murillo

Starring Montse Mostaza, Nieve de Medina, Alejandra Lorenzo, Elena de Frutos and Mariana Cordero


Gloria is a single mother working at the same hospital as gynaecologist Ana Torres. To ease her financial worries, she accepts an offer to go with her young daughter Vicky (Alejandra Lorenzo) to live with Ana, also taking on the responsibility as receptionist and assistant at Ana’s evening practice in the house. Once there, Gloria discovers that Ana is conducting abortions and is persuaded to assist with these. Ana also seems to have feelings towards her, something Gloria tries to resist. When Gloria becomes pregnant, an angry Ana persuades her to have an abortion, following which strange things begin to occur in the old house.

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‘Películas para no dormir’ (Films To Keep You Awake) was a series of six films made for Spanish television in 2006 and based on a Spanish television series called ‘Historias para no dormir’ (Tales To Keep You Awake), which was originally broadcast between 1966 and 1968. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, who directed ‘La culpa’ (‘Blame’), wrote and directed the original television series, as well as introducing each episode in the style of ‘Alfred Hitchcock Presents’.

‘La culpa’ might be a rather unsubtle commentary on abortion, although Ana’s motivation is always left open to interpretation, and it treads well worn ground. However, it tells its story very well and with a minimum of unnecessary trimmings, using the tried and tested old creepy house setting, including locked doors, a dusty attic full of children’s toys, and strange noises.

The whole series of films is recommended.

Review posted 30 March 2009



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Películas para no dormir: Adivina quién soy

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Rating 3½


Directed by Enrique Urbizu

Written by Enrique Urbizu and Jorge Arenillas

Starring Goya Toledo, Nerea Inchausti, Eduard Farelo, Mark Ullod, José María Pou and Aitor Mazo


Estrella (Nerea Inchausti) is a young girl with a vivid imagination and an insatiable appetite for reading gothic novels and horror stories. Her mother Angela (Goya Toledo) is a nurse whose working hours means her daughter is often alone in their apartment. Estrella is bright, but she shies away from making friends, instead creating her own network of imaginary companions, monsters from the various books she reads and the horror films she secretly watches when her mother is working. Her imaginary friends protect her, but one of them, “Vampire” (Eduard Farelo), seems to be taking it one step further and encroaching into the real world.

‘Adivina quién soy’ (‘A Real Friend’) is part of ‘Películas para no dormir’ (‘Six Films To Keep You Awake’), a series of six horror films made for Spanish television in 2006. The film deals with the blur between reality and imagination in the mind of a child and the potential impact, both positive and negative, of the stimulus of fiction and non-fiction, both written and visual. It also questions the role and responsibility of parents, asking us to decide how much they should encourage flights of fancy and tolerate extremes of imagination, as well as how much duty of care they have towards children in their absence.

The film is a surreal mixture of drama, humour and horror. In one scene Leatherface, one of Estrella’s imaginary friends, is sat next to her in school, clearly bored by the class and restless. In another scene, Estrella spies her mother having sex with the apartment building’s security man up against a wall in the underground car park, refusing to talk to her afterwards, throwing a tantrum, but not saying what is wrong.

As the film progresses there seems to be stories within stories within stories, almost like a Russian doll, as Estrella’s fantasies become increasingly blurred and mixed in with real life.

This is the second film in the ‘Películas para no dormir’ series I have seen, following on from ‘Para entrar a vivir’, and like that film, I was very impressed. It’s an unusual and interesting premise, executed in an original way. I highly recommend it.



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Películas para no dormir: Para entrar a vivir

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Rating 3


Directed by Jaume Balagueró

Written by Jaume Balagueró and Alberto Marini

Starring Macarena Gómez, Adrià Collado, Nuria González, Ruth Díaz and Roberto Romero


A young couple expecting a child go to see an affordable apartment situated in a dilapidated building in an outlying district of the city where they live. Once there, they find themselves trapped in a nightmarish and deadly scenario from which there seems to be no escape.

‘Películas para no dormir: Para entrar a vivir’ translates as ‘Films To Keep You Awake: To Let’. Made in 2006, this was one of six Spanish films based on a celebrated television series called ‘Historias para no dormir’ (‘Tales To Keep You Awake’), which was broadcast between 1966 and 1968 and briefly revived in 1982.

‘To Let’ is effective and excellently acted and bears some similarities to the Japanese horror film ‘Honogurai mizu no soko kara’ (‘Dark Water’). Although the stories told in these two films are actually quite different, the settings are similar.

The story here is, perhaps, a little overstretched and, as such, ends up being rather threadbare. The set-up and the opening scenes are excellent, but once Clara (Macarena Gómez) and Mario (Adrià Collado) become trapped in the old apartment building it does start to get rather drawn out, although a decent level of suspense is maintained. The film only has a running time of 68 minutes, but I cannot help but think it would have been possible to trim 10 or 15 minutes from this. Having said that, I think it is well worth a recommendation.

Director Jaume Balagueró, who has won no fewer than 27 awards at various European film festivals, also directed ‘Darkness’, a horror film set in the Catalan region of Spain and starring Anna Paquin.


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