Summer of the Patriarch – Weekend
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Mystical Spanish horror is a phenomenon that has long been of interest to connoisseurs of the genre. Here we can recall the aesthetic “Hive Spirit” by Victor Eris, and Guillermo del Toro’s dilogy about the civil war (“Devil’s Backbone”, “Pan’s Labyrinth”), and the recent hit Netflix “Platform”. Shown at festivals in Sitges, Turin and Montreal (Fantasia), and now released in Russian distribution, the horror film At Death’s Door continues the glorious tradition of scaring everyone, everywhere and at once: everyday, otherworldly and historical.
Madrid, heat, June. Forecasters scare with suffocating heat and temperature records. 39.9 degrees Celsius. Pensioner Rosa (Angela Gamonal) performs morning routines to a burning song about love, takes pills, combs her hair in front of a mirror, puts on a purple shirt and jumps from a small balcony onto the Madrid pavement. Barely awakened husband Manuel (Sorion Egileor) is in shock, but, gritting his teeth, does not let out an extra word even at the funeral. Worried son Mario (Gustavo Salmeron) persuades his father to move in with him at least for a little while, but this will not help. The situation will continue to heat up – and it’s not just about the 50-degree heat.
The closeness of the metropolis gradually enters into resonance with the burning situation in the Mario family. Four months since he lost his job – and yet he can not get a new one, looking for peace of mind in small bars. Daughter Naya (Paula Gallego) endures the turbulence of puberty: she meets a motorcyclist, moonlights as a nurse and is angry with her father that after the death of her mother he remarried. New wife Lena (Irene Anula) feels hostility from Mario’s relatives and still tries not to reciprocate (although the forces in the circumstances are increasingly lacking). When Manuel occupies a distant little room in the family’s new apartment, where blockages alternate with short circuits, mutual dissatisfaction quickly reaches boiling point. Somehow, at dinner, a silent widower generally announces the imminent death of the entire family. “Tomorrow night I will kill you,” he informs distantly.
The nervous atmosphere of “On the Threshold of Death” from the very first minutes does not bode well: animal metaphors stand out in the words of the refrain-sounding romance; the post-apocalyptic landscape on the opening credits turns out to be Francisco Goya’s strokes on the canvas Two Old Men Eat Soup (1819–1823) from the Dark Pictures cycle; Madrid is filled with suspicious pensioners, who usually appear in horror films one by one, and here they arranged a real convention of harbingers of trouble.
Whatever they talk about here, everything rests on the inevitability of death: someone has already died, someone is at risk of losing their life from dehydration, old age or lack of money, old-timer Manuel mentions the civil war and the dawn of the fascist regime. The heat seems to lock the characters and viewers with memories of the worst days of life and history in general, not allowing even a sip of hope for the future. The room where the extravagant patriarch is located, hearing otherworldly voices, was conceived as a nursery for the child of Elena and Mario, but this mirage of family happiness is also locked up until better times. The rapid aging of Europe (for 10 years the number of pensioners has reached 20%), global warming (every summer in Madrid really breaks records), unemployment problems, finally. Here the apocalypse will happen unnoticed – there are too many routine things.
Through the dialogue of the mystical and the bureaucratic, At Death’s Door is reminiscent of Robin Campillo’s masterpiece of discomfort, The Returned, filmed almost 20 years ago. There, in a small French town, all those who had died over the past 10 years were suddenly resurrected, and the local administration was faced with the need to put millions of old new citizens somewhere. Those, however, only exist in space, moving with the sluggishness of zombies and not needing food or care. This, of course, does not make it easier for shocked relatives – living with longing for the dead is not at all the same as re-entering them into everyday life and work schedule. Around – again, the heat and unkind grasshoppers chirp.
The approach of the directorial duo Raul Cerezo – Fernando Gonzalez Gomez, of course, leans more towards the horror genre palette. The nervous soundtrack of Eneco Vadillo pumps non-stop, the grimaces of elderly Spaniards and suspicious silhouettes in doorways are interspersed with sharp camera movements, loud noises and even acts of self-mutilation. Mechanical manifestations of horror firmly connect the chthonic horrors of the past – like superstitions about souls in mirrors or post-mortem photos – with actual fears of the moment, confirmed by statistics. So the cult Reportage (2007) breathed new life into zombie horror, drawing inspiration from the fashionable technique of quasi-documentary photography and the mystical aura of the Spanish land.
“No one can hear you! Nobody talks to you!” – Mario shouts at his father in the climactic scene, trying to cure Manuel of his belief in otherworldly voices. In fact, he voices an unfortunate fact for most pensioners (and many people in general). Still not suspecting that the Madrid old-timers have found a way to be heard.
In theaters from June 15
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