A Spanish horror film that will feel very familiar to those who have seen one or two movies about vengeful spirits, The Communion Girl has a lot going for it, and I suspect there may be a bit more to it than I even realised. For example, considering the themes being explored, I'm not sure why it was set in the latter half of the 1980s. The time period didn't seem to matter too much, but maybe that will be a bonus for people who know more about what may have been happening in Spain at that time. Or maybe it doesn't matter.
Carla Campara plays Sara, a relatively new girl in town. After a night of drink and drugs with her friend, Rebe (Aina Quiñones), things get a bit spooky. While being driven home by a couple of potential "bad boys", Sara thinks she sees a little girl in a communion dress crossing their path. Heading into some woods to find her, she comes back with nothing more than a grubby little doll. Hoping to reunite doll and owner, Sara takes the thing back home. And that's when things go from bad to worse, with Sara and Rebe, and one or two others, eventually having visions of a scary figure who seems to want to be saved from being lost, cold, and alone.
Directed by Victor García, who also directed the fun Return To House On Haunted Hill and the not-so-fun Hellraiser: Revelations, this is a perfectly enjoyable slice of spookiness that features a pair of decent main characters having to solve a mystery before it causes them to expire. Guillem Clau's script delivers just enough information and context throughout to keep them going on the right track while the exact details are suitably obfuscated until it's time for a last-minute reveal. It also shows Sara and Rebe dealing with a number of other factors - two very different family situations, interference from others ready to judge the company they keep and how they spend their time - as they try to focus their energies on an increasingly important investigation.
Campra and Quiñones are both very good in their roles, playing two different types of young women who complement one another nicely, and both Marc Soler and Carlos Oviedo are decent as the young men who end up unwillingly involved in a very scary situation. Aside from Olimpia Roch, playing Sara's little sister, Judit, and doing an excellent job of providing extra motivation for Sara to put an end to the danger that she worries will also affect others around her, I would also highlight the combination of physical performance and great makeup that brings "to life" one or two impressively unnerving spirits.
While there's nothing spectacular here, and nothing spectacularly original, this does everything you want it to do very well. The actions of the characters don't feel too illogical, the central mystery is put together reasonably well, and there's a dark undertone to a number of main sequences that highlight a deeper theme running through everything (again, the time period may also be a factor here, but maybe that was just used to omit the genre-spoiling likes of the internet and smart phones). Maybe not a film to revisit often, if at all, but it's a creepy little gem that horror fans shouldn't resent fitting into their viewing schedules.
7/10
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