By Amanda Dominguez-Chio Contributor
There are two guidelines I give myself to follow when watching a scary movie. First, don’t watch a scary movie at night. Once the movie is over, your mind becomes your worst enemy, making you believe you saw someone or something out of the corners of your eyes. Second, don’t watch a scary movie by yourself. By doing so, you have no one to comfort you whenever the scary scenes happen. An addendum to this list is to know who you’re watching the scary movie with. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve watched a scary movie with someone who would jump out of their seat and loudly gasp. It just ruins the whole experience. But whenever I watch a scary movie, I tend to break the second guideline, which brings me to my experience watching a movie called Netflix’s “scariest movie ever.”
The film managed to establish the relationship between each character, showing just how close these siblings are through their dialogue.
The Spanish horror film “Verónica” is set in 1991 in Madrid, Spain. The film follows a teenage girl taking care of her three younger siblings. She gets them up from bed, feeds them and takes them to school while her widowed mother works nonstop as the family’s sole breadwinner. One day at school, while the rest of the students witness the solar eclipse, Verónica and her two friends sneak away to perform a séance. Using a Ouija board from an occult magazine they’ve purchased, they find themselves communicating with Verónica’s deceased father. As you might have already guessed, things get weird. The glass breaks, incoherent mumbling commences and the Ouija board inexplicably breaks in half. Chaos ensues as Verónica tries protecting her younger siblings from the paranormal disturbances.
One of the highlights of the film is the relationship between Verónica and her three siblings: Lucia, Irene, and Antonito. I generally oppose having kids in horror films because acting in these movies could result in mental trauma (e.g., Samuel from “The Babadook,” Charlie from “The Purge,” etc.). So I was a little nervous when I saw not one but three child actors. However, these kids impressed me. The film managed to establish the relationship between each character, showing just how close these siblings are through their dialogue.
“Verónica” certainly isn’t the scariest movie I’ve seen. The film contains a memorable, albeit shudder-worthy scene where the characters eat meatballs that almost makes up for the film’s excessive use of jump scares. However, if a scary movie makes my heart rapidly beat against my chest, my palms sweat and my whole body tense up, then I’d say it’s a winner.
