THE WAILING

The story is divided into distinct sections, with Andrea's being the initial one, and undoubtedly the most interesting. There's a mystery to what's happening to her as she begins to unwind and a deep-seated paranoia takes over; we discover as she does that this strange man can only be seen through a camera lens. It's a sickening thought, and one that nearly drives Andrea to madness as she refuses to sleep, constantly trying to surveil her surroundings. This is also a slickly produced section, with communication between her and her boyfriend Pau (Àlex Monner, '[Rec]³: Génesis', 'The Next Skin') over WhatsApp displayed effectively on screen.

The next portion, where we journey back to 1998 in Argentina to meet a teenage Marie (Mathilde Ollivier, 'Overlord', TV's '1899'), a foot brake is immediately applied to both the story's pace and any real tension. She begins stalking Camila (Malena Villa, 'El Angel', 'Mariposa') and filming her from a distance, and this goes on for nearly half an hour before - yes, you guessed it - she's filming and also spots the creepy man. Unfortunately, while there was mystery to the first section, there is very little in this portion, and for almost its entire duration, you will be able to foreshadow what plays out.

Then, when that section thankfully draws to a close, we move on yet again, only to find the film's credits almost immediately rolling with absolutely no closure. We're left with so many questions... how does the same building exist in both Spain and Argentina? Who is the strange man? What happened to start this chain of events? There's so much that remains unresolved, and not in a cryptic, "Come up with your own meaning" kind of way. This is outright leaving the audience with an emptiness, an empty void born from satisfaction. Director and co-writer Pedro Martín-Calero (in his feature debut) commented, "It's the reflection of structural violence in a society which unfortunately hasn't changed as much as might seem or we would like to believe." This is an important message that should be told, and goes some way to explain why the film is the way it is, yet still leaves all of those questions agonisingly unanswered.

The other disappointment is the film's use of Ester Expósito. This 25-year-old Spanish actor is immense at the moment; she currently has 25 million followers on her Instagram account. Yet this film only has her on screen for a small portion of its run time, and in that, limits her to a very subdued role.

The film doesn't make use of cheap jump scares; it's not that kind of story. Where it succeeds with suspense is in the absence of light, the audience (and occasionally the characters) never knowing if something may be present in the dark corners or hallways. Perhaps the finest examples of this are the sequences inside the puzzling building. The best use of horror, however, is what we see that others don't, and the unease that grows in the pit of your stomach from that.

'The Wailing' stumbles far more than it succeeds. The potential for something much greater is right there, below the surface, and something that truly could have spoken to Martín-Calero and co-writer Isabel Peña's ('The Beasts', TV's 'Antidisturbios') ambitions. Instead, what results is a horror film that is outright boring for considerable slabs of time. There doesn't need to be gore, there doesn't need to be terror - but there does need to be something to keep the audience engaged for the duration.