Movie Review: Veronica (2017)

Veronica (2017) co-written and directed by Paco Plaza

A solar eclipse is a time when darkness is stronger than light. One happened in Madrid in 1991. While everyone else at Veronica's school is on the roof watching the celestial phenomenon, she and two friends are in the school's basement. They use a Ouija Board to try and communicate with deceased loved ones. Veronica successfully contacts something, but it hardly seems to be her dad. She's hearing voices and seeing spirits, and they are getting louder and more concrete.

Veronica's already got a tough home life. Her mom runs a bar/cafe late into the night, so Veronica takes care of the younger three kids both during the night and in the morning when they all need to get to school. She's forced to be more grown up, which also makes her more isolated from her school friends. Her rough life is even rougher now that she's inadvertently invited an evil presence into their home.

The movie is a fairly typical take on the "there's a demon in my house/life" movie (Drag Me to Hell, Ringu). The plot doesn't hold many surprises. Even so, the main character (played by Sandra Escacena) is very sympathetic and well acted. The visual effects and weird things are familiar but not exact copies of things in other horror movies, so they get the job done. The movie has a lot of set up (i.e. it's slow in the beginning) but ends well enough to avoid being disappointing (which a lot of mid-level horror films don't achieve). The movie is in Spanish, so there's subtitles. I prefer subtitling to dubbing, but your preferences will probably effect your enjoyment of the film.

Mildly recommended--this is a solid B-movie horror film.