Venezuela: The House at the End of Time (2013)
I go in to these films as blind as possible. If you're reading this, and you have any intention at all of watching The House at the End of Time, stop reading now. You don't want spoilers. You don't even want to know more about the film. You just want to know that this is a South American horror flick about a scary house. Stop reading now and thank me later when you come back and read more.
I love films that surprise me. It's not that I'm cynical and jaded, nor that I'm such a genius I can usually predict what's going to happen with a high level of accuracy. No (well...), I like to be surprised because it means that the film is doing things that feel fresh, things that are new and things that are clever.
I loved this film, and yet I was aware that I might not have loved it so much had I known that it wasn't a horror film at all. Oh, it starts off as a horror film (very much so, in fact) and then sets itself up to be very scary indeed, before the audience is hoodwinked completely and an utterly different story starts to be told in a truly unexpected series of genres. This is a time travel science fiction fantasy thriller drama. And I don't feel silly for saying that, despite it sounding messy in the extreme, because it works perfectly. Every single element of the plot comes together in the most pleasing way possible, and rather than it feeling like someone ticking off points in an exercise book, this never feels mechanical: it feels entirely organic, and every revelation is deserved.
If you've got this far you've either seen the film already or you have no interest in watching it unspoiled, so here goes:
The film opens with Dulce waking up at home, bloodied and confused. She finds her husband Juan José stabbed to death. Her terrified son is then pulled into a room by mysterious forces and the door slams shut. This is a strong opening, and surprisingly we then jump forward thirty years as Dulce is semi-released from her prison sentence in an attempt to ease her back into society (she's allowed home, but with prison guards). The rest of the film plays out over several time periods as we learn the truth of what happened.
None of this sounds revolutionary, because it's not. It's standard horror fare. But this isn't a horror film, it's using horror tropes to establish a setting and then pull the rug out from underneath the audience (and, indeed, from under Dulce herself). Because Dulce did kill her husband - but not yet. Her son was taken by mysterious forces - Dulce herself. In the future.
This is absolutely wonderful. Because as the flashbacks lay out the plot it's not at all clear where this is going. There's a very Nigel Kneale scene where a priest investigates the house's sinister past (everyone who's ever lived in it has gone missing, and it was originally constructed by a mysterious British Freemason who chose the site because he believed it revealed the truth of life itself), all of which threatens a genre - demonic terror - that the film simply ignores. There's nothing demonic here in any way. The haunting that we see in a flashback isn't a terrifying encounter with a spectre at all - it's a time-travelling Dulce. Well, several time-travelling Dulces, because it's that kind of film. And every time something is explained (and you find yourself thinking "what the fuck just happened?") it doesn't immediately make sense, until later on when it's explained further.
This isn't watching artificial materials assembled to construct a soulless automaton; this is watching beautifully detailed jigsaw puzzle pieces fit together to build a lavish piece of art that you were never expecting at all.
Had I known all of this going in to the film I probably wouldn't be as pleasantly surprised as I was throughout (because you'd be sitting there trying to anticipate all the developments), but even so I think I'd have been delighted by how clever all of this was, and how genuinely moved I was by the drama at the core of this. This isn't a film designed to scare for no reason or to confuse simply to impress the viewer; this is a rich drama about a highly sympathetic lead who becomes more real to the viewer the longer the film continues. By the end of this we want Dulce to have the happy ending she so richly deserves. (The fact that we're told about a lover we never see - the real father of her eldest child - actually adds to the drama, rather than disappointing us. All of the actions of the characters make sense in the light of this information, and what could have been a negative ending for her son (because being dragged thirty years into the future can't be good for your mental health) turns out not to be because thirty years earlier his undiagnosed heart condition couldn't be treated. Okay, when I say it like that it sounds a little too nicely resolved to be true, but seriously it doesn't feel like that when you watch the film; this film feels right. Just perfectly, beautifully right.
Ruddy Rodríguez gives an outstanding performance as Dulce (she's in almost every scene and she's the one holding all of this together), not once overplaying either the confusion of what's happening or her horrified reaction to it. She's, initially, as confused as the viewer, but by the end I hope she found the closure she needed, because I genuinely cared about her. Rodríguez makes her that real. It's a lovely bit of acting, and she's the heart of the film.
I don't usually focus on the actual plot of the film for these reviews, I prefer to take one aspect of the film and play with it for a while, but the plot of this is so genuinely unexpected, and it works so well, that I can't sing its praises enough. This is a wonderful film.
Note to self: never watch it again. You've now over-hyped it and you'll only be disappointed.
Disc: DVD (Region 2, UK)
Source: eBay
Availability: Still widely available; the UK and US are restricted to DVDs. Spain and Germany both have Blu-rays (no English subs), the rest of the world is pretty much missing out. Domestically this was a smash hit - it should have been one worldwide too.