Sister Death (Hermana Muerte)

 I wasn't a huge fan of Verónica, but it had enough going for it that I ended up checking out writer/director Paco Plaza's prequel (written along with Jorge Guerricaechevarría). It's... well, it shares many of Verónica's problems, but it ends up being a far more interesting movie.

 Sister Death follows a very minor character from the first movie - the creepy... well, Sister Death, whose role was basically to be a spooky presence in the background and to dispense a tiny bit of exposition.
 Here we get to see her as a young Novitiate. Narcisa (Aria Bedmar) arrives at remote nunnery / school for girls with a bit of baggage; When she was a child, she received holy visions that made her a bit of a local celebrity.
 This fame impresses her new sisters (Maru Validivelso and Luisa Merelas), but young Narcisa is full of doubts; In confession, she admits that she is not sure what it is she saw, and yearns for some sort of confirmation.

 So when strange things start to happen - noises in the middle of the night, a chair falling over on its own accord - the novice latches onto it, thinking it's some sort of sign. The bumps in the dark, she learns from the children, are caused by the ghost of a girl who goes around drawing hangman doodles on the walls (that's this movie's version of the haunted toy trope, I guess). Narcisa befriends one of the kids who seems to be targeted by the haunting (Sara Roch) and investigates. It doesn't end well. She also starts having horrible - and deeply silly - waking nightmares.

 So far... not great. But then the third act kicks off with a total eclipse (in another one of the very mild references to Verónica) and the story switches tracks completely. The finale has some severe problems - the solution to the mystery the movie had been teasing is outright shown, not solved, the explanation fails to make sense of many of the weird happenings, and it all feels very disconnected from what came before. But... well, it does take Narcisa's character in an interesting direction, and it's a cool little series of events where time folds in on itself satisfyingly.

 From a script standpoint it kind of sucks, but still, it's better than anything that came before; I'm not going to complain too much.

 On the whole it's all right, and very well made; The cinematographer this time around is Daniel Fernández Abelló, and the 1:33 compositions are often beautiful. It's a luminous movie, with lots of play between stark sunlight and shadows and the convent, what with all the religious iconography, often makes for a very striking backdrop. It's very atmospheric and creepy.
 At least until it gets to the scares: while somewhat imaginative, they're... well, pretty damn ridiculous. For example: the falling chair is good foreshadowing, but it's not particularly scary. That doesn't stop the music and the visual language from trying to sell it as the most horrible thing ever. Same goes for the hangman doodles and a teleporting scissor - the less said about the constricting dress (the film's most on-the-nose bit of imagery), the better.

 The more overtly fantastic visions/nightmares are inventive, but cheesy as all hell and very, very stupid. Until the finale; Even then, it's not like the movie coheres and justifies itself, it's more like we suddenly find ourselves in a better, more interesting film.

 Verónica was a possession movie that did without religion and an exorcism. Its prequel moves further away from that subgenre - this is firmly a ghost story - but it's also got a healthy iconoclastic streak despite its sanctified trappings. I'm still not sold on the whole Verónica cinematic universe, but for now I remain cautiously interested.

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!