REVIEW: MALASAÑA 32

By Elena Anele (*)

MALASAÑA 32 it is a new Spanish Horror flick directed by Albert Pintó (KILLING GOD) and written by Ramón Campos, Gema R. Neira, David Orea and Salvador S. Molina – all of them coming from TV series projects- and produced thanks to Warner Bros. España, Bambu Producciones and Atresmedia. It was released at theaters in Spain last  Christmas.

Main stars are Begoña Vargas, Iván Marcos, Beatriz Segura and Sergio Castellanos. That includes a copy of Antoñito character from Paco Plaza’s   Veronica and the strange role of a grandfather that is closer to the one in The Day of the Beast than a real accurate one from the 20s. Acting is far from good especially in the case of the family man.

It tells the story of a family moving to Madrid from a little village in the 70s. They are going to live in a flat in street Malasaña 32 that seems to be haunted. It is based on stories about a building situated in Calle Antonio Grillo, 3 where paranormal activity took place and almost 10 people died, and many others went through weird unexplained cases for several years.

It tries to follow Veronica’s main elements, basing the movie on real facts and including a what appears to be an ordinary family but nothing on it makes sense.

First, when you arrive to a new house you clean it, you do not start living with the former owner’s pictures, clothes and so.

Secondly, easy frights are burned since the very beginning containing a lot of faults in the plot with illogical twists.

And third, they create an ugly and senseless Frankenstein monster of different elements taken from Insidious, The Conjuring and even Annabel that it is more a comedy of Scary movie type than a serious horror. For example, Concha Velasco’s character will have been powerful and great if the story had been better and threads from the flying chair hadn’t been exposed.

As you can see, very disappointing feelings after watching a movie I was really looking forward to seeing this year.

Spanish video review:

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Elena Anele is the woman in charge of SPANISHFEAR.COM, Horror Rises from Spain  and Un Fan de Paul Naschy . A literature and cinema researcher, finishing her postgraduate studies with a thesis about the mystic filmmaker José Val del Omar. She has published in different media and books as Fangoria or 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.