REVIEW: TIN & TINA by RUBIN STEIN
by Elena Romea (*)
TIN&TINA, the first feature by Rubin Stein and based on his short film, tells the story of a couple who after a miscarriage lost their faith in God. To come back to normal they decided to adopt two children in a convent… but they may not be as pure as they seem…
It is a psychological horror-thriller film set in the early 1980s in Spain. On her wedding day, Lola (Milena Smit) suffers to lose the baby she was expecting and the capacity to be pregnant again. Adolfo (Jaime Lorente), her husband, convinces her to adopt a baby in a convent close to their home where Lola falls in love with two lovely twins with a musical talent. Tin and Tina, the twins, are frantic religious and obsessed with Christ, God, and salvation. Soon their attitude and behavior turn their peaceful family life into fear. Adolfo does not believe Lola’s suspicious of the kids, but they are getting more and more radical in their beliefs and more and more sadist with everything and everybody around them… especially when Lola discovers she is pregnant again.
The film is beautifully made, and the acting is surprisingly good. There is estrangement flowing around throughout the movie that will catch you till the final chapter and will make you distrust your conceived ideas from the very beginning of the feature. Children are as scary as the ones in Village of the Damned and that is a strength. It is said that they are named Tin and Tina after St. Augustine (San Agustín in Spanish; 354-430 AD): a writer, theologian, and philosopher who after he turned to Christianity worked as Bishop of Hipona, Argel (North Africa), was considered the father of the Western Church and was named Doctor of the Church by his extensive work in life and writings about faith and religion.
As a weakness, I can consider the abuse of nostalgic elements used to set the story in a specific time and date following today’s fashion of desiring to come back to the past for better times. The movie reunites two of the most popular icons of the 80s for kids in Spain: Teresa Rabal – a singer who specialized in music for children- and Chelo Vivares -who played Espinete, a pink humanoid hedgehog, in the TV show Barrio Sésamo. Other references/tributes to cult classics such as Narciso Ibáñez Serrador, Nosferatu, and Pulp Fiction can be found in the film.
The film was at Bilbao’s FANT festival on 23 March 2023 and it was released in theaters date in Spain on 2 31 March 2023. Now it is available on Netflix.
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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.
