La Peste
2017 · 10m · Uruguay
Directed by Guillermo Carbonell
Genres: dark comedy, horror, thriller
A young woman's elderly father escapes his nursing home and returns to her house at night — hiding a secret, and not coming alone.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A nursing home escape that pivots into something genuinely uncanny — the premise looks like sentimental drama until it absolutely isn't, and that whiplash is exactly the kind of structural trap that makes consensus scouts squeamish and Felix vindicated.
Carbonell executes the tonal balance between dark comedy and genuine dread with formal precision, the kind of restraint in reveal and pacing that suggests a filmmaker aware of how genre operates in cinema history — respecting the machinery while dismantling expectation.
The decision to keep the father's secret off-screen until the exact moment of impact transforms what could be a generic twist into something tactile and immediate; it's a sound design and performance choice that makes ten minutes feel economical rather than rushed.