Title – Veronica (2017)

Director – Paco Plaza ([Rec])

Cast – Sandra Escacena, Iván Chavero, Bruna González, Ángela Fabián

Plot – In Madrid of 1991, teenage girl Veronica (Escacena) begins to experience an increasingly ominous series of supernatural events after she and her friends try conjuring up the spirits of their dead acquaintances with a Ouija Board.

“Is there someone here with us?”

Review by Eddie on 26/03/2018

Kudos to the marketing team responsible for Netflix’s newest horror outing Veronica for making [Rec] director’s Paco Plaza’s film “the scariest film of the year!!!!!”, a film that is supposedly “so scary only 1 in 100 people can sit through it” (if you believe the internet).

For a small budgeted and subtitled Spanish horror, that would usually be bypassed by the masses, looking instead for their next Conjuring or Insidious, Veronica (a film which takes inspiration from a real life incident that occurred in the early 1990’s) has become quite the wonder over a short period of time.

While it’s impossible for the film to live up the monikers that have been placed upon it by a world that loves to join carriages to the hype train, Plaza’s film is still a highly effective and technically proficient outing that will cause one to double take when they eventually roll into bed after a viewing.

Telling the story of teenage girl Veronica (played impressively by Sandra Escacena) who begins to wish that she didn’t use a Ouija Board to try and make contact with her dead dad, Plaza’s film creates an almost instantaneously ominous mood as Veronica’s life begins to spiral out of control with an increasingly prevalent presence making itself a part of the teenagers life as she struggles to deal with looking after her siblings in the absence of her workaholic and depressed mother.

There’s nothing highly original about Veronica’s set-up or scares but Plaza, who showed great promise with [Rec] and its sequels, delivers them in often unexpected ways and the films brilliant score by Chucky Namanera and the technical aspects of Plaza’s direction and DOP work by Pablo Rosso help create a mood and atmosphere that is lacking in most mainstream or even independent offerings.

The most disappointing aspect of Veronica as a whole is that from its groundwork it does begin to peter out in its later stages as the initial mysteries of what exactly is happening are answered and for all the “scariest film ever” taglines that have been thrown around concerning the film, the last act does feel like a non-event.

Final Say –

Veronica offers up a solid and technically sound horror experience that’s filled with its fair share of solid and jump out of your seat scares and while Plaza’s film has without question been the victim of over-hype, Veronica is likely to remain one of 2018’s most memorable horror experiences.

3 ½ blind nuns out of 5