Therion
2011 · 15m · España
Directed by Mario García Prados, Pepe Botías
Genres: drama, historical, horror
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
In a postwar Spain cursed and fearful of God, Carlos is not an ordinary child: he suffers strange attacks that frighten those who know him. Only one solution seems possible.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The premise wants to be transgressive—possession as social disease in Franco's Spain—but the execution feels dutiful, reverent even, like it's afraid to actually *commit* to the blasphemy it's flirting with. It's a contrarian setup strangled by its own solemnity.
García Prados and Botías situate this squarely in a lineage of European art-horror—the dread aesthetics of Polanski, the religious unease of early Bresson—and the discipline is evident in every shadow and withheld moment; the formal restraint transforms postwar dread into something genuinely unsettling without ever resorting to spectacle.
The sound design decision to let the ambient hum of fear—the breath, the room-tone—do the heavy lifting instead of a score is what separates this from earnest horror pastiche; it's a choice that costs nothing and gains everything, transforming a period piece into something claustrophobic and immediate.