Rating: C+
Dir: Norberto Ramos del Val
Star: Javier Bódalo, Diana Gómez, Daniela Costa, Alba García
I’m probably one of the few people to have watched this recently because of the director, who was responsible for the enjoyable Killing Time. Most recent reviews I’ve found were due to this being an early entry in Ana de Armas’s filmography. They’re typically quite scathing, because she’s in it for only one scene, lasting less than twenty seconds – albeit doing slave Leia cosplay (top – I’m not proud, and will take my search-engine traffic where I can get it). That was an unexpected bonus for me; while it’s a bit of a mess, especially in the second half, I was still adequately amused. Which is a surprise, considering how many of the jokes are Spanish and/or Internet-based, not likely to date or travel well. Shitty influencers being shitty is clearly independent of time and place.
The central pair here are Faraday (Bódalo), a paranormal nerd with delusions of telekinetic ability, and his girlfriend Pati (Gómez), a cupcake creator with a small ‐ okay, tiny – Internet following. They move into a new apartment, on which they got a smoking deal. Turns out the reason for this is, the previous residents died in suspicious circumstances, and the place is now haunted. The resulting spectral activity causes Pati’s online footprint to grow, but Faraday falls for the female ghost, Sonia (García). Matters are complicated further by influencer Joana Castellet (Costa), who intends to carry out an occult soul transfer ceremony at the “Interstellar Congress of Bloggers”, requiring a lot of human sacrifice. It’s up to Pati, Faraday and their geek pals to stop her.
This opens with a quote by Jill Roberts in Scream IV: “My friends? What world are you living in? I don’t need friends; I need fans. Don’t you get it?” It’s a decent summary of the film’s philosophy which casts a sardonic eye on the implicit assertion that how many followers you have is more important than what you say. Consider this film dates back more than a decade, it’s a situation which has only got worse with the proliferation of social media platforms, and their inhabitants, and it’s one at which the film pokes fun. Some of this works beautifully. Witness Pati’s live-stream of a party, accompanied by right on the nose online comments: “PATI’S PARTY IS WILD! I’M SO SAD ABOUT EGYPT #FunAndSolidarity.”
There’s no doubt there is a lot of localized humour, apparent in scenes with a comedic set-up, but no punchline detectable to foreign observers. The second half, in particular at the BloggerCon, seems to include a lot of cameos from people who were presumably better known in 2013 Madrid than 2024 Phoenix. It’s like Sharknado 2 on steroids there. The makers should probably also have decided whether or not go full mockumentary: elements of this are, but others are straight dramatic film, and it never quite gels. There’s no questioning the amount of ideas here though, and I’d rather see someone try and cram in too much to their film, rather than spreading the imagination too thinly.