Sitge 2022 | ‘Venus’: Jaume Balagueró opens the festival with a discreet cosmic horror criminal thriller that turns Ester Expósito into Scream Queen

Everything a film needs to rock a Sitges opening is hidden somewhere in ‘Venus‘, which after passing through Toronto has premiered for the first time in Europe at the 55th edition of the Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia. Nevertheless, the return of Jaume Balagueró to horror cinema leaves a bittersweet feeling, since on paper, locating a story of rituals and cosmic elements in a flat on the outskirts of Madrid is a brilliant idea.

The film is the new installment of the label ‘The Fear Collection‘ specializing in the horror film genre created by Sony Pictures and Pokeepsie Films, the production company of Carolina Bang and Alex De la Iglesia, in partnership with Amazon. Although it will arrive exclusively in theaters throughout Spain on December 2, after passing through theaters it will be available on Prime Video. It was a good opportunity to improve the stumble of ‘Venicephrenia‘, and although it takes a step forward in terms of the style of the label, it is not the strong impulse that it needed.

It is also convenient to establish the appropriate expectations regarding the label and its possibilities. Amazon has already established this dynamic with Blumhouse and its collections are so poor that ‘Venus’ turns out to be a party at its side, but after ‘Way Down‘, more was expected from a Balagueró who returns to his ‘Musa’ mode without getting it to seem that it has come out of that same state. From the appearance and themes to the mix of genres, even in the casting, where Manuela Vellés was in the previous one here we have Ester Expósito.

The actress plays the go-go dancer Lucía who wants to leave behind her job in her nightclub, run by mobsters and gang members. One day, Lucía steals a bag full of designer drugs from her bosses but it is not easy for her to get away with it, if she returns home they will find her quickly, so she seeks refuge with her older sister, Rocío (Ángela Cremonte), and her niece, Alba (Inés Fernández), from whom she is estranged. They live in the Edificio Venus, located on the outskirts of Madrid, but she soon senses that something is wrong in the apartment.

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His sister and the building she lives in have secrets of their own and strange things start to happen the closer an unexpected solar eclipse approaches. Lucía must step up and protect her niece against supernatural forces and cruel mobsters. The idea is excellent, and follows the tradition of mixing genres that even before ‘Open Until Dawn’ (1996) was no stranger to Spanish fantaterror, with examples such as ‘Beyond the terror‘ (1980) and the most related ‘Cthulhu’s mansion (1992) by Juan Piquer Simon.

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However, visually and conceptually, it is closer to the version of that idea that we can find in the most recent ‘La horda’ (2009) or, above all, ‘Baskin‘ (2015), although ‘Venus’ came with the idea of ​​being inspired by HP Lovecraft’s short story, ‘Dreams of the Witch’s House’which will also be adapted in ‘cabinet of curiosities by Guillermo del Toro and already had an excellent version in 2005 by Stuart Gordon. Balagueró, who has co-written the script with Fernando Navarro, does not pay much attention to the text and adheres to more recent cinematographic references.

We will not find here complicated relationships between angles, mathematics and horrors outside space-time, but rather a rather ordinary combination of familiar elements, both in Balagueró’s cinema —the Venus building and its inhabitants could be those of ‘To enter to live’— and other closer references, such as ‘Lords of Salem‘ (2012) and his trio of old ladies —with a scene at the table practically recreated—, ‘Mandy’ (2018) and his drugs as fuel or even hits by his partner Paco Plaza like ‘Veronica‘ (2017) —that catalytic eclipse— or the most recent ‘The grandmother‘ (2021), with a similar use of a song.

Esther Exposito Starring in Venus

Balagueró, however, seems more interested in the drama of the two sisters than in horror, on whether their mother forgives them or not, or on the group of mobsters-not-very-intelligent, who seem to have come out of an Ibáñez comic. But the underlying mystery is not developed very much and by the time the last act arrives, it seems that the script can be rushed. It seems that if at least the most interesting things had started earlier, ‘Venus’ could be a survival horror like ‘Sweet Home‘ with Lovecraftian elements, but by the time that part gets there it’s a little too late.

A missed but worthy opportunity

Expósito fulfills its function and in the end Balagueró dresses her as Manuela Velasco in REC and has a small moment of scream queen that does not quite gel with the melodramatic tone in which Balagueró sometimes falls, with the aggravating circumstance of using horrendous techno music out of date. thread and fashionable, a stone with which ‘Veneciafrenia’ already stumbled. She accompanies the final stretch with more blood and gore, which is veiled by an elusive montageas embarrassed to show the result of the special effects, which is added to a dull, ugly photograph, full of very closed shots in the characters, without luster.

Balagueró does not dwell on the locations, not even when he presents us with the building. Each element arising from a great idea is being wasted in some way and in the end one of the most satisfying aspects is that there is more of the Argento of mothers than of Lovecraftdespite the fact that his coda gives a chill of embarrassment, despite the fact that he manages to keep up the rhythm and leave some good ideas, like that “fountain” of cockroaches or some dreams, some inspired by a deleted scene from ‘Jacob’s Ladder‘ (1990).

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‘Venus’ has the spirit of an anthology story, it is a pity that it does not dare to kick off a while before and does not finish exploiting its elements of cosmic horror, reduced to a script convenience for two thirds of this. Although Balagueró is always welcome, he seemed more comfortable in the heist genre of his previous work, so much so that he seems to be including criminals in his plots to escape terror in some way, in any case it is a missed opportunity to win back the director and prove that The Fear Collection has something to say in modern horror movies.

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Sitge 2022 | ‘Venus’: Jaume Balagueró opens the festival with a discreet cosmic horror criminal thriller that turns Ester Expósito into Scream Queen