Verónica

 Back in 1991, a girl suffered some hallucinations after running a séance with some friends at school. She died soon after, and there were reports that the house was haunted afterwards and whatnot. It's a popular occult pseudo-urban legend in Spain, and supposedly the first instance of paranormal phenomena documented on a police report, at least in that country.
 Director Paco plaza, who co-wrote (along with Fernando Navarro) Verónica, a movie based on that incident, basically takes the premise and a couple details and twists everything up into a pretty standard horror yarn. But you know, it gets a 'Based on true events' disclaimer. That's important for marketing.

 The titular Verónica (Sandra Escacena) is a teen living in a large apartment with her younger siblings (Bruna González, Claudia Placer and Iván Chavero), whom she looks after while her widower mother (Ana Torrent) is out all day working to make ends meet. The movie has an excellent sense of place and immediacy, which helps immensely as the supernatural elements creep into the well-established domesticity. The spooky stuff comes into play when Verónica tries to use an Ouija board to contact her late father along with some friends at school while everyone else is out catching a glimpse of a total eclipse*.

 The spirit summoning ritual goes wrong, of course, and Verónica starts seeing an apparition around the house that starts threatening her and her family.

 It's a possession story, but one that's mercifully secular, despite there being several nuns involved ('You keep god out of this, he's got nothing to do with it' one of them says). There's no exorcism, other than an attempt to run another séance, and a few effective, creepy scenes as the ghoul pops up here and there. There's a large overlap between possessions and hauntings in horror (cue all the 'The Haunting of *' movies), and this feels more like the latter, which I prefer.

 Unfortunately, there's also few surprises and a whole lot of cheese. It's a shame; The film does a great job of making the characters sympathetic, but the more formulaic nature of the scares rob them of impact. For those of you keeping track of haunted toys in these movies, there's a haunted Simon here. It's used to great effect, flashing red and blue lights that mirror the police arrival in the scenes that bookend the film.

 While the film isn't particularly scary (many of the scenes are more likely to cause an eye roll rather than a gasp) it's still pretty fun. It doesn't have a lot of time for humor, but there are some pretty funny bits (like when Verónica gives a toddler an occult encyclopedia and tells him to copy the symbols on the walls; the kid ends up switching pages and drawing Solomonic demon seals).
 It's also well-paced and very, very stylish (cinematographer: Pablo Rosso); I knew I was on board when, on one of the first scenes, the camera sticks to an opening car door and shows an interlocutor within the rearview mirror. Brilliant. The ghost is creepy enough and, as mentioned, scores some good scenes, a few cool supernatural stunts, to go along with its less successful showings.

 Above all, the film works hard to ground the story, making Verónica's internal, domestic and social life compelling; It's a shame the supernatural threat is a bit too uninteresting to collect on the stakes.

 *: I checked, and there were no total eclipses visible from Madrid in the 90s. For shame, Veronica, I thought you were based on a true story!