The Funeral Home

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Originally, this was supposed to be a Spanish film called 'Sexy Killer'. However, having trouble finding it, I changed things up to this Argentinian (Spanish language) flick, found easily on good old Shudder, as I still wanted to do International horror at least once this month. After all, after seeing a movie like 'Cabin in the Woods', a horror fan does get curious as to what different nationalities have to offer.

The plot here is pretty straightforward. Taking place in a funeral home (surprise), we focus on a dysfunctional family of three; undertaker, Bernardo (Luis Machín), his wife, Estela (Celeste Gerez) and her daughter, but his stepdaughter, Irina (Camila Vaccarini). The family is haunted, and this s something that's just accepted, and I sort of admire that. It's so typical for American ghost movies to need that scepticism - while one or two people know things are happening, others know there must be a logical explanation, dubbing the believers crazy and whatnot. This is simply "hey, we live in a funeral home, so it's haunted".

Bernardo and Irina have a belief that the house is haunted by an entity that will one day allow them to see and communicate with their loved ones - particularly Irina's real father, who both Bernardo and Estela claim to have been a horrible person in life. Meanwhile, Bernardo's own father comes into question, as he had a history of dabbling in the occult, and Estela believes he may be a big part of this haunting. But there's more to the spirits Bernardo communicates with as well, like perhaps a former partner he once had an affair with. Soon, a psychic named Ramona (Susana Varela) is hired to cleanse the house, but as events unfold, they get a bit more convoluted and if I'm being 100% honest, a bit confusing to the point of taking you out of things.

So forgive me for a bit of a half-assed review, but I'm not sure I totally understood everything that went on with this film. It seems the kind of thing that might gather some kind of cult following, but I think this one's a bit lost on me - at least as far as story and characters go (no one is particularly likable here). That said, this does have a few things that help it along as a supernatural horror movie. The atmosphere actually works really well, and things are sort of ever-creepy here. There aren't really any cheap jump scares to speak of, and the film does a god job at showing us just enough of these entities and how a frightened family interacts with them. One scene that stands out is a spirit in Irina's room that is filmed in such a way that suggests "I'm here, but I'm not gonna let you see me", and it's downright eerie.

So I guess as an international horror film, this holds its own pretty well, and it's decent for a creepy night in, hiding under your covers. It's not gonna make you lose sleep, but there is something unsettling enough about it that it works. For me, it only works up to a certain point though, and when it was all over, it really did turn into a "what the hell did I just watch?" situation. I think this is another case of me just not quite getting it though, so I'll give the movie points for its overall feel, but not a whole lot else. Parts of this felt pretty typical to me, but some didn't, and the bottom line is I can't formulate a very good opinion on this one. So I'll give it a pass, at least for some of the best haunting atmosphere I've seen in a while.

3/5

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