The Coffee Table (La Mesita del Comedor)

 This... this is a really hard movie to write about without ruining it a little.

 Without spoiling anything: The Coffee Table is an extremely fucked up Spanish provocation - think Álex de la Iglesia, but more hostile to the viewer than he's ever been. Nominally horror, it features some of the blackest of black comedy I've seen in a long time... and unlike nearly all horror comedies, it's plenty horrific, although probably not in the way you'd expect.

 Jesús (David Pareja) and Maria (Estefanía de los Santos) are a middle-aged couple in the process of remodelling their apartment to make space for their newborn son. They're introduced at a furniture store where Jesús hopes to buy an extremely tacky glass-top coffee table, against his wife's justifiably horrified protestations. It's a quietly hilarious scene that, as they argue while an obsequious salesman gives them the hard sell, and it quickly establishes one of the film's major tones: whip-smart, well-acted character work, very funny in a sort of humour that's poised somewhere between observational and cringe.

 That tone is maintained as they make their way back to their apartment. And then a horrific tragedy strikes, which the film treats seriously, only to then cruelly start bringing back in the same sort of quotidian comedy from before. And things slowly start spiralling out of control.

 Yes, you can probably guess what it is that happens. And yes, it's brutal, though mercifully not as graphic as it could have been. But that happens very early in the film so that's not really where I feel the need to tread lightly. What I don't want to spoil is where the movie goes from there, because unpredictability is key to the film's bizarre allure.

 Writer/director Caye Casas gleefully keeps the chaos simmering, later expertly managing some very tense Hitchcock-style suspense to pretty unusual ends. His gift for unintentionally ironic remarks, in particular, remains a delight until the very end. The script (co-written with Chris Borobia) also has room for some inspired bits of lunacy -religious imagery, a 13-year-old femme fatale, Jesús's unexplainable sex appeal with all the major characters- and of course keeps up the wonderful dialog, which the talented cast have a field day with (Josep Maria Riera and Claudia Riera share the back half as Jesús and Maria's houseguests).

 On the technical front, it's a very accomplished movie, with good photography (cinematographer: Alberto Morago Muñoz) and a style that purposefully alternates between well-composed shots and jittery, handheld cameras. The production design is excellent, if on a modest scale, and I particularly loved the title sequence.

 It's a great movie, though the subject matter and trollish tone does make it hard to recommend. I almost feel like a bad person for liking it; And that, surely, is the intention.