REVIEW: JAUME BALAGUERO’S VENUS (2022)
by Elena Romea (*)
VENUS is the latest feature film by Jaume Balagueró (REC, SLEEP TIGHT). It opened the 55th edition of the Sitges Film Festival and it was screened at the Toronto Film Festival.
This is the second movie produced by Alex de la Iglesia’s company The Fear Collection, a label specializing in Spanish horror created by Sony Pictures International Productions and Pokeepsie Films in association with Prime Video.
Venus stars Ester Expósito, Ángela Cremonte, Magüi Mira, Fernando Valdivieso, and Federico Aguado among others. In Venus, Balagueró, who also co-wrote the screenplay together with Fernando Navarro (VERONICA), pictures cosmic terror inside a building in the suburbs of Madrid.
Featuring according to Balagueró in an interview in El Correo Spanish newspaper “terror, blood, aberrations, and terribly bad people”, the fiction is said to be based on H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House”, transferring the story to a “dirty, modern city” setting in the outskirts of Madrid focusing on a cursed building in the district of Villaverde Sur. Go-go dancer Lucía (Ester Expósito), on the run with a stash of pills and hunted by mobsters, takes sanctuary in an apartment block with sister Rocío and niece Alba only to find out that malevolent supernatural forces are at play in the building.
Ester Expósito is great in the film and also most of the actors, the story is ok, best latest Balaguero’s, full of what I like most from REC: custom and manners, daily life in Spain, and the peculiar sense of thrill and dashes of realism that lives in our houses. Besides, it is no more than a revision of Suspiria mixed with Lovecraft and traces from previous blockbusters such as La Abuela or Verónica. By the way, I found the cosmos parts kind of tacky.
It will keep you entertained.
__________________________________________________________
Elena Romea is the woman in charge of SPANISHFEAR.COM, Horror Rises from Spain and Un Fan de Paul Naschy . A literature and cinema researcher, Ph.D. in Spanish studies with a thesis about the mystic filmmaker José Val del Omar. She has published in different media and books such as Fangoria and Hidden Horror. She has also been in charge of several translations including Javier Trujillo’s complete works, La Mano Film Fest, The Man who Saw Frankenstein Cry, and many more.
