Hay algo en la oscuridad
2017 · 15m · España
Directed by Fran Casanova
Genres: coming-of-age, family, horror
Verónica, a six-year-old girl, tries to overcome her fear of the dark. Helped by her mother, she has gradually learned to sleep with fewer lights on, though she still clings to her torch; but this time there is something different: this time there is something in the darkness.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a respectable inversion of the monster-in-the-dark trope, but the emotional sincerity keeps it from genuinely subverting anything—it settles into tenderness when it could've gone genuinely weird with that premise.
Casanova demonstrates formal control in how the film articulates childhood fear through mise-en-scène and sound design, situating itself within a lineage of European family drama that takes the internal life of children seriously.
The singular choice here is the sound design—the way ambient darkness becomes textured and present, almost another character—which transforms what could be a straightforward coming-of-age beat into something genuinely unsettling on a micro-budget.