Cariño (Affection)
2018 · 15m · España
Directed by Ángel Gómez Hernández
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
For Sabina, new neighbours count as a blessing. Soon Sabina realises that perfection hides flaws, as a solitary, dull life turns into a genuine nightmare.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like boilerplate suburban paranoia until you realize Hernández isn't interested in jump scares or twist reveals—he's mining something weirder about how proximity to 'perfection' rewires your perception of reality, which is a genuinely unsettling angle most horror filmmakers would botch.
Cariño positions itself within the Spanish gothic tradition of psychological unease, demonstrating formal control in how it modulates between mundane domestic observation and creeping dread through measured pacing and compositional restraint.
The film's power lives in a single recurring choice: the way Hernández frames Sabina's face during moments of ordinary interaction, letting micro-expressions of discomfort accumulate until you can't unsee the wrongness—a 15-minute study in how performance and framing can collapse the distance between neighborly and nightmarish on a tight budget.