Newly divorced Isabel moves with her two children into an exclusive apartment building with an unexpectedly affordable rental fee – and a very peculiar approval procedure. But the increasingly bizarre sounds from the three elderly neighbours downstairs soon start to disturb more than their peace…
Grimmfest says: This makes for an interesting comparison with two other films screening in this year’s festival. Like EVIL DRESS, it’s about a woman and her offspring trying to rebuild their lives after a messy divorce, only to discover their new home has dark, dangerous, and possibly supernatural secrets; and like THE ROOM BELOW, it’s a film exploring the stories we tell ourselves to deal with life-changing trauma. Isabel has tried to create a unifying fable for herself and her kids: they are sailors, off on an adventure. But much as the kids love this idea, they find a fable that better suits them, and their situation: Hansel and Gretel. But this is a Grimm’s Fairy Tale by way of a Roman Polanski horror psychodrama, with clear nods to ROSEMARY’S BANY and THE TENANT. Echoes of Argento’s Three Mothers Trilogy, too, in the mysterious trio of witches controlling everything in the building. But these cinematic referencings only serve to heighten the fantastic, fairytale elements, while grounding them in a more psychologically grounded, more “adult” version of the supernatural. And this is very much a fairy tale for adults. Smart, stylish, cine-literate, and with a sophisticated understanding both of the seduction power of stories, and of the need sometimes to question them, it’s a film which constantly challenges and confounds the expectations it so carefully sets up, making excellent use of its eerie Bilbao apartment building locations, and anchored by a emotional powerhouse Spanish Screen legend Maribel Verdu, alongside two remarkable performances from child actors Sofía Otero and Zorion Eguileor, upon whose young shoulders much of the film’s narrative rests.