El presagio
2008 · 15m · España
Directed by Nestor F. Dennis
Genres: action, adventure, fantasy
Tones: dark, mythic, theatrical
In a fantastic Middle Ages, a group of valiant warriors faces, in a parallel historical world, supernatural beings called 'sectantes'.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's *almost* there—medieval-supernatural mashup that wants to be Arthurian but lands somewhere between a stage play and a fever dream, which should be more interesting than it ends up being; the theatrical excess reads more reverent than subversive.
Dennis stages this in a register that recalls Pasolini's mythic cinema and early Boorman—the formal commitment to dark theatricality and mythic register suggests a filmmaker aware of his lineage, even if the YouTube compression obscures whether the craft actually delivers on that ambition.
The decision to play the 'sectantes' not as monsters but as inverted mirror-versions of the warriors themselves—suggested in how they move and occupy the frame—is the spine holding together what could've been pulp, and it's executed with almost no budget.