Here is another sociologically buttressed Spanish-language gothic horror to file alongside The Devil’s Backbone and The Orphanage. With this film set near 1980s Tarragona, director Víctor García (who has the ninth Hellraiser film, from 2011, on his résumé) draws on a convincing period setting to nourish his scare story – even if the shocks aren’t especially chilling, and the sense of claustrophobic entrapment in the milieu is undermined by a cop-out open ending.
Teenager Sara (Carla Campra) is newly arrived in town, and struggling to adjust to this backwater with its stifling piety and social snobbery. After letting off some steam at a club with her hothead pal Rebe (Aina Quiñones) and hitching a lift back with a pair of local bad boys, they almost crash when a spectral girl in a communion dress runs in front of their car. Obviously Chucky hadn’t come out in Spain at this point, because they walk away with her creepy, pucker-faced communion doll. A mottled infection begins spreading up Sara’s arm, and she begins experiencing appalling visions in broad daylight.
In truth, these flashbacks – of being drowned in a well by a hideous putrefying revenant – prod us with the horror stick somewhat unsubtly. Much more intriguing is the social context supplied by García and fellow writers Guillem Clua and Alberto Marini, as Sara learns she is not the first person in the town to be afflicted. This malaise seems to run historically through the teenage population – like the classic Charles Burns comic Black Hole – but its source, and the illness’s metaphorical meaning, is not obvious.
It could be social conformity, and as Sara, Rebe and hunky greaser Pedro (Marc Soler) track down what happened to the original communion girl, all roads seem to be leading towards the Catholic church. But García, perhaps hoping to start a franchise, is strangely reluctant to fully nail the story shut. It feels like a compromise that squanders the carefully layered social dynamics and uniformly strong acting, full of hormonal Sturm und Drang.
• The Communion Girl is available on Shudder on 11 August
