Por eso no tengo hermanos
2014 · 12m · España
Directed by Paco Cavero
Genres: dark comedy, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
Antonio, obliged by his wife, takes her brother to the lake so that he disconnects from his recent sentimental breakup, the same day that Antonio has to attend a friend's bachelor party; Carlos, the brother-in-law, obsessed with the belief that a monster inhabits the lake, will do everything possible for Antonio to stay with him until the possible sighting: will the monster appear? Will Carlos be the real monster for Antonio?
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A brother-in-law's obsessive lake-monster fixation becomes the actual threat—the film commits fully to this inversion without winking, which is exactly the kind of subversive premise everyone else passes on because it sounds too silly until you realize it's genuinely unsettling.
Cavero situates this within a lineage of Spanish dark comedies that use genre scaffolding (the monster, the bachelor party obligation) as formal architecture for examining social obligation and masculine tension—there's real consideration in how the absurdism never undercuts the psychological precision.
The masterstroke is treating the monster legend as genuinely *plausible* within Carlos's desperation rather than as obvious metaphor—that tonal commitment, sustained across 12 minutes on what must be a modest budget, is what separates this from dozens of 'unreliable character' shorts that hedge their bets.