Veronica

Veronica

This Spanish film about a Ouijia board experience gone wrong is all style, but lacks a certain something. Don’t get us wrong – we enjoyed it considerably. Listen to our discussion for the subtle nuances and a special tribute.

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Veronica (2017)

Episode 127, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Craig:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a chainsaw. I’m Craig. And I’m Todd. This week, I think we were a little bit at a loss for what to do. We’ve been doing some theme months and, we’ve been doing some viewer requests, and it got very near to the end of the week. And, I texted Todd, what are we doing? And, he didn’t know.

Todd:  Welcome to this peak behind the curtain.

Craig:  So as it turns out, my dear sweet grandmother, died last week. And it would of course, that was a very sad situation, but the good that came out of it was that all my family got together, and I was, talking to one of my cousins, Grant, who is a singer and performer, out of Colorado, and he also very much enjoys horror movies, and he recommended a film on Netflix called Veronica from 2017. Now there are actually 2 films currently on Netflix from 2017 with the same title, but the one that we are doing was directed by Paco Plaza, who is the same guy who directed Rec, which is another movie that we’ve reviewed and I think that both of us, enjoyed pretty much. Yeah. We love that. And, yeah. So I said let’s give it a go and we did. I had never heard of this movie before.  Had you, Todd?

Todd:  No. This is the first I had heard of it and, and seen it obviously.

Craig:  Yeah. I I So I had never heard of it, but I thought what the heck we’ll give it a shot. This is a Spanish language film, again, like I said, from 2017, and it’s supposedly based on true events. Now, we’ve watched and reviewed enough horror movies to be skeptical when these movies say that they’re based on true events. So I I don’t know how much of this is accurate, but what I have read is that this is one of the only, if maybe the only, cases where a police report was filed in Spain, where paranormal activity was Todd in the police report. What I have read about the actual story is there was this teenage girl, and she and some of her friends, messed around with a Ouija board. In real life, they were trying to contact the recently deceased boyfriend of one of them. This boyfriend had died in a motorcycle accident, I think, or a car accident, and they were trying to contact him via a Ouija board.  And after that happened, all sorts of strange paranormal things started happening, with this young lady in her house, and it eventually led to her death. Apparently even after her death, all kinds of paranormal things kept going on, until the family eventually moved from where they were living and, then I guess the paranormal activity stopped. So, if you, you know, believe in that kind of thing, I don’t know if, you know, something happened with this girl or if it was just, you know, where they were living. I have no idea, but that’s what the movie is based on and that’s kind of the basic plot that the movie follows. Now, some things they changed, obviously, in this movie, this young lady, Veronica, played by a young woman, a newcomer named I think, oh gosh, Sandra? Was that her name? Sandra Escansena? She and her friends perform a seance at their Catholic school, during an eclipse, and then all hell breaks loose, basically. And that’s, the premise of the movie. You know, I’ve seen a lot of these movies, you know, these, possession movies, you know, Ouija board movies. I’ve seen a lot of them and, they vary in quality.  This movie has gotten a lot of Craig. It’s won awards, if you look for it online, you will see it being billed as one of the scariest movies of all time. Yeah. Supposedly audience members, in the theatrical release, like, fled the theater because it was so scary that they couldn’t finish it or whatever. I don’t know. I didn’t find it that scary. I didn’t have to I didn’t have to, like, take off my headphones and close my computer because I was so scared or anything. But overall, I thought it was pretty good.  What were your thoughts, Todd? You know,

Todd:  I I really have to take issue with that idea that people fled the theater or something. I mean, what is this like, the 19 thirties? Right. This is this is certainly not the scariest movie I’ve ever seen by far, but it was freaky, you know? And I think that Yeah. Honestly, it’s a pretty pedestrian, to be fair. I feel like at its core, plot wise, what happens, it’s a pretty pedestrian possession slash haunting movie with a Ouija board. I didn’t really see anything new, not not much really that was new as far as in fact, there was a lot of old tropes, you know, in it. Yeah. But it was very well filmed, and very well acted.  And I think that the the reason that people probably find it scarier than you or I do is because of the whole based on a true story thing. You know? Right. And it wasn’t actually I wasn’t really paying attention. I I didn’t read up about the movie before I saw it. And so the film opens. It it kind of bookends with the the police arriving at the apartment. Right. And it shows up on the screen exactly what you said, 1991, such and such and such.  These these incidents were reported by the detectives at the scene of of this incident, blah blah blah. And I immediately dismissed that, you know, because I figured, okay. Yeah. Right. We’ve seen that enough. Sure. Sure. And and even if it did actually happen, it probably didn’t happen exactly this way.  We’ve talked about this before with the Texas chainsaw, with Amityville, that kind of thing. Mhmm. So I just kinda put that out of my mind for the rest of the film. It wasn’t until the end of the film when the story came back to that that point, which was, you know, 3 days the story jumps back to 3 days prior, and then, of course, it finally gets us back to that night and back to the beginning of the movie again. And that’s the point where I thought, oh, I I forgot. Yeah. I guess it did say this was based on true story. I guess I’ll be interested to see, read up about it afterwards and see how much of this is actually purported to have happened.  And it was only at that point that I realized, I I guess, that this movie would have felt a lot scarier to me had I taken that more seriously at the beginning. Does that make sense? So Yeah. Fair enough. So, so I kind of I kind of have that mindset so I would definitely not recommend this to somebody is the scariest movie that you’ve ever seen I wouldn’t even put it in the top you know 30 of scariest movies I’ve ever seen sure but it’s solid you know it’s a nice solid spooky movie and yeah some really good moments it had some moments that I thought were inventive I’d had some great cinematography. But Yeah. To be honest, the first part of the movie kinda dragged on to me. It wasn’t until about an hour in when I felt like we started to kinda get to the good stuff.

Craig:  Yeah. Yeah. No. I I agree with I I you kinda took the words right out of my mouth. I you know, in terms of like a possession movie, you know, it it hits all the same notes that most of them hit. And, you know, I say possession, this girl doesn’t actually get possessed. I I I guess the premise is that, you know, they have this seance and then some sort of force kind of itself to this girl, and then kind of haunts her and her family. And it’s not all that different from anything else that you’ve seen, in that same vein.  But I I do think, that it was really well made and I and I think that, you know, it’s it not that it’s similar to, but it it kinda strikes some of the same chords as something like The Conjuring, which is also another movie that’s purportedly based on a true story. But, you know, when you really look into it, it’s kind of loosely based. But I I just thought that, they did a really good job with it. Paco Plaza, the guy who directed it, who also directed Rec, we enjoyed Rec. This is different. You know, of course, it’s not found footage. It’s not all handheld. I actually thought the cinematography was really, really good.  Like, there were there were some things that were going on, with shots and and scenes, that I was like, wow, that’s that’s that’s really good and really effective. The other thing that I thought was really endearing about the movie were the performances of some of the main actors. The girl who plays Veronica, like I said, she’s a newcomer. I don’t know that she had been in anything else, and she really has to carry the whole movie. Yeah. She’s in every single scene. It it centers around her, and she does a really really good job. You know, she seems like a real teenage girl.  She looks like a teenager. She doesn’t look like a 30 year old playing a teenager. You know, she’s she’s an attractive girl, but she looks like a normal teenager. You know, she’s got braces and Yeah. She’s got a single mother and her mother works a lot. I I didn’t really I I don’t know if her mother owns this restaurant that she works at or if she’s a manager, but she’s there all the time. And so Veronica is home with her significantly younger siblings, like she’s a teenager and her sibling she’s got 2 sisters and a little brother, and they’re all significantly younger than her. And those kids, especially the little boy, Antonio, They’re all cute, and the little boy who plays Antonio, the little brother, is just one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

Todd:  He’s got these glasses. Make a size big, and they’ll be both And

Craig:  he’s a little cross eyed. But they’re so cute. I don’t know, you know, what their process was, but it really seemed like these they felt like a family, they felt like brothers and sisters and you believed that, she was looking out for them and you believed that or I did, that, you know, they were that they trusted her and they were looking to her for guidance and protection, and it hit a lot of the right notes, in terms of character and relationships, and the filming was really good. It may not have been the most inventive or original story, but, it it had a lot of things going on for it. Because of that, by the end of it, I was like, yeah, I liked it. Like, I I get why my cousin, recommended it to me. It it it stand it’s a good movie.

Todd:  Yeah. It had quite a bit of setup, and some of the setup, you know, really worked well, and some of the setup just kind of went nowhere. That would be my first thing. Of course, the setup is also told a very pedestrian way. We get we jump right in. We meet all these characters. We get us you know, she runs around and wakes up all the kids and, goes off to her mom to her mom and and her mom’s at work and all that. And so so we get very quickly a sense of this family and their dynamic and that she’s basically raising these kids.  And then she’s getting on the phone, and she’s up at school, and she’s talking with her two friends, Rosa and Diana, and they’re talking about, okay, we’re gonna do this today. Right? We’re gonna do this today. And in the meantime, the rest of the kids at the school, including her younger siblings, are all supposed to get negatives from their, you know, for for, like, film negatives to to view the eclipse. So it Mhmm. Like, everybody at school is talking about the solar eclipse that’s supposed to be happening that day, and they’re supposed to view, which I didn’t I didn’t know if this works. I guess, you can view them through film negatives. I don’t know. But anyway, so so they’re doing that.  And, and then, of course, like, it’s so typical, but here we are at school, and it’s a it’s a Catholic school. What are the teachers doing? They’re teaching a lesson on the eclipse. And what are they saying? They’re saying all these mysterious intriguing things about the eclipse that are gonna have some bearing upon the movie soon enough. You know? Like, there was it was some cultures, like the ancient Mayans believed that, the eclipse was a time when the portals of the dead, you know, would would cross over to the living and blah blah blah. Mhmm. They even used it as the prime point for human sacrifice. And they’re zooming in on, pictures, slides, you know, that the nun is putting up on the screen. And, I mean, it’s just kinda funny, like, I’m thinking, now if I were in high school, and I was, when there was an eclipse going on, I don’t remember the teachers delving into this territory.

Craig:  I’m it’s a Catholic school time. I guess so. No.

Todd:  I didn’t go to Catholic school, so who knows? But, you know, like, it was usually pretty sciency about the eclipse.

Craig:  Yeah. No. I did go to Catholic school. This this would not have been out of the ordinary.

Todd:  Oh, thank you for verifying that. Okay. Well, I stay corrected in this. But the thing is, you don’t like it’s cool It sets up that idea that okay that there’s a there’s something about the Eclipse that is going to make this Ouija session that these girls are gonna gather to do while everybody else is up at the eclipse. They’re going to the basement of this school or whatever to do the seance. And the girls believe it’s gonna be more powerful seance at that time. And, of course, the teachers have told us it’s gonna be more powerful seance at that time. So, you know, in that respect, it’s kind of nice that it sets us up as not just another Ouija session, a real reason for why this this particular Ouija session had such an impact and and caused them so much trouble.  And and that that’s good. It was a good setup that way. And then it set up this notion of the human sacrifice. It’s zooming in on all these things that I think are gonna have some bearing later on, and I’m not sure they really do.

Craig:  Yeah. I I get what you’re saying. I mean, it it’s a good, you know, it’s a good scene, you know, they’re they’re using the Ouija board and, they’re using a glass as the planchette, and it’s cutting back and forth between them in the basement and the people up at, you know, on the roof watching the seance. And there’s there’s one creepy blind nun that we get lots of shots of, you know, which is super cliche, but whatever, you know, kinda scary.

Todd:  Does every Catholic school also have a creepy blind nun? I have to know that. See that some No.

Craig:  But they do no. But they do smoke in the basement and hit you. That that is true.

Todd:  Fair enough.

Craig:  Oh, man. But, you know, they’re they’re having this seance and, like, of course, the eclipse is going on and they’re they’re doing these cool, like, back and forth shots between the eclipse and what they’re doing with the seance. And again, like, just the filmmaking is it’s cool, and it it’s, it builds the tension. But while they’re having the seance, like, things start to go weird and, like, the the 2 other girls besides Veronica, like, take their hands off the planchette, and she’s the only one that has it on there. And, eventually, the glass, like, explodes and, it cuts Veronica’s hand, and she bleeds onto the board, which that can’t be good. Right? And then she passes out, and her friends are freaking out. And one of them, I think it’s Rosa, leans over her, and Veronica is whispering. And this was something that bothered me a little bit about the movie because I took Spanish in high school and college, but I am certainly not fluent.  But they subtitle, you know, everything. But then when Veronica is whispering, they didn’t subtitle it. And I’m, like, damn it. Like, what is she saying? But, of course, it comes out later. But the friend freaks out and then Veronica, like, you know, kinda sits up halfway and her mouth kind of it opens unnaturally wide and she screams and the lights, you know, like, intensify, like, the the light bulbs get brighter and stuff. All of that, you know, me saying it, all of that sounds like any scene out of any Mhmm. Supernatural movie. And it is.  You know, it’s it’s it’s not that inventive, but, it’s it it works. I mean, this this guy, he he shot it well, and it looks Todd, and it is it’s tense, and it’s I I wasn’t scared, like, I didn’t need to go hide or anything, but it was it was it was tense and frightening and, I thought they did a good job. And from from that point on, as you would expect, things just start to get weird.

Todd:  Yeah. And and this was the part of the movie that I I started losing a little bit of patience with. And I think it’s just because, you know, we’ve seen this before. I kinda wanna know what’s the point. Okay. What’s the deal here? Okay. So weird things are happening. It’s kind of like your haunted house movie where, okay, you know they’re coming to the house, you know creepy things are gonna happen, but what’s the point? Like, when are we gonna get to the spot where we under Todd to understand or we Todd to get these drops of clues as to why these creepy things are significant and what impact it’s gonna truly have on our characters aside from the fact that it’s just a creepy house.  You know, in this case, aside from the fact, it was a Ouija session. They clearly let some spirit out. They were trying to contact Veronica’s father. Right. And so they brought a photograph of her father there as a personal item or whatnot. And it’s just a line of just strange things. The board had torn in half, and she puts the board in a in a bag and puts it up on this above a cabinet in her room. And the minute she walks out of the room, she hears that it’s falling down.  She goes in to put it back 2 or 3 times, and it still falls down. It there’s a there’s a scene at the dinner table where Veronica’s having a really hard time eating meatballs. But, you know, like, it’s just it’s almost like you think she’s possessed or something, and everything’s kinda moving in slow motion for her. She sees some eerie marks on her shoulder, which I didn’t quite get if maybe it was supposed to be somebody grabbing her in her sleep, or maybe later we were supposed to believe she grabbed herself or something.

Craig:  Yeah. It looked like a hand print.

Todd:  Yeah. She’s giving the little kid Antonio a bath, and the water suddenly as she leaves the room, suddenly the water’s, like, boiling hot and she has to grab him out and, she almost ends up locked in the other room, you know, while while this is going on. And she sees weird reflections in the TV. There are shadows passing around inside the house. And, I mean, all this is happening, but to me, it’s like there’s no build. It’s like, okay. Here’s a creepy thing. Alright.  Here’s a creepy thing. And now, here’s a creepy thing. And aside from the fact they’re all happening in and around her vicinity, like, and I’m thinking, is this her father? Whatever. It just wasn’t engaging enough for me to because one didn’t beget the next, you know. I couldn’t see a common thread going through it all. And Todd didn’t feel like it was building building to something. It just felt like, okay, well, alright. I get it.  Yeah. Creepy stuff. Something’s loose. What’s the point? You know.

Craig:  I kinda can’t believe that I’m about to defend this, but I’m going to. I just feel like that is very commercial, and, you know, this is this is what audiences want right now. You know, like, if you’re gonna have a a popular horror film, they want they I guess I am included in that, you know, you want things to be happening. You know, you don’t want to be sitting there waiting for something to happening Sure. To happen. And and this, you know, this movie, as many of them do, again, James Wan, I think, is the guy that did The Conjuring, and he’s done lots of other really popular, horror films. But, you know, you gotta keep people involved, you gotta keep people intrigued, so you gotta have a creepy reflection in the TV, you know, every few seconds or something falling off a counter just to kinda, you know, keep the interest. And I get what you’re saying, like, where is it going, what does it all mean, But I don’t know that your, expectations are reasonable.

Todd:  No. Just a bit. I’m gonna I’m gonna battle you back on this for a second because, for example, the conjuring. Okay? Like, the whole conjuring is about bringing the other people in to investigate it. Right? So immediately, okay, so there are a few creepy things that happened, but then they bring in the husband and wife team, and now they’re trying to figure out how are they going to, you know, get the ghost. And so, yeah, more creepy things happen, but that’s within the context of the 2 of them trying to narrow down exactly what’s going on in the house and this will, you know, there are these kind of clues and things that I feel like give it some focus. The older haunted house movies, maybe they they They go there a little bit, but in a lot of the older films you the big mystery is what is this about, you know? What is the source of the power? What is the source of the ghost? Or, oh my Todd, it’s the creepy kids, you know, or something like that. Whereas in this case, we know where what it’s about.  It’s about some spirit in the Ouija board. So I I just I just wanted the the plot to go in a particular direction. I felt like I could have been watching this for 2 hours, you know, before it just intense Oh, you could have.

Craig:  I totally agree with you. I just think that and again, I have to put myself in this category. You know, as an audience, we we wanna be entertained and we want to keep things happening and we have short attention spans. And so you you’ve gotta scare me every 2 or 3 minutes, or you’ve gotta make me Yeah. Look at something every 2 or 3 minutes, or I might I would like to think that I wouldn’t, you know, so now, but but who knows? But yeah. And and and then, you know, there’s there’s a couple of, dream sequences, and this is you know, I was reading just a little bit about this online and I was reading some fan, reviews. One of them was like, oh, there’s these dream sequences and it’s totally obvious that it’s a dream. Well, okay.  Get over it. Like, it’s a dream sequence. Like, these things happen. Mhmm. But there’s there’s one, in the middle of the night, you know, Veronica. And there’s there’s there’s cool stuff with music and, like, she does this thing every night where she, like, shines her flashlight up on her ceiling.

Todd:  That is awesome.

Craig:  Yeah. Where there’s these, the glow in the dark stars that those of us who grew up in the eighties nineties, all of us had those at some point, either in our childhood rooms or our college dorms or something. And, you know, every night she shines watch it, it’s actually really cool, like It is. They do they do really it, it’s actually really cool, like It is. They do they do really cool stuff with the beam of the flashlight kinda matching up with, the crescent of the moon and, on the on the ceiling. It’s really neat. But anyway Well,

Todd:  that whole sequence like with her shining the beam on this on the ceiling, it just evokes it evokes the sun, it evokes the moon, it it kind of evokes the eclipse with that action. And then even it it starts to overlay her laying in the bed, and I don’t know about you, but I was instantly getting flashes back to like the sacrifice pictures that were from earlier I mean sure it really ties those themes together very well and he revisits those quite a bit and is very inventive about it. And to me, those are some of the creepiest moments of the movie because, again, I felt like this is going somewhere. You know, he’s really pulling me into this this theme, you know, this this, central idea of the film that had been set up from the beginning.

Craig:  Yeah. I I mean, that’s just the thing. I I I feel like I can’t really articulate it, but the whole movie is just it’s well crafted. It’s it’s like a really good short story or a a a good novel, like, things just tie together. And not everything, you know, I get it that you’re saying there’s all these kind of cliched kind of trope kind of things going on, and there are. But overall, I just thought it was I don’t know. I thought it worked. It worked for me.  And and she she has these dreams like in the middle of the night, she wakes up after that whole flashlight thing, and her closet door, swings open. You know, it’s kinda the creaky swing open, and she sees her sisters huddled in the closet and they’re scared, and she turns around and her dad, or at least the guy from the picture, is standing in the shadows in the corner of her room completely nude chanting her name quietly, like in a whisper.

Todd:  Oh, yeah. And and 5 points for full frontal male nudity. How often do we get to see that in a movie? I They’re

Craig:  they’re not afraid to

Todd:  show the weiner in Europe. That’s true. They love

Craig:  the weiner in Europe. They’re they’re not afraid to

Todd:  show the weiner in Europe. That’s true. They love the weiner in Europe.

Craig:  Thank God. And then, like, she backs up against her bed and like these creepy supernatural arms, like, come out of her bed and grab her and hold her down. And yes, we’ve seen this a 1000000 times. We’ve seen the, you know, the the disembodied arms, you know, pulling somebody down or holding somebody down. But but it it’s well done. I mean, like, they did a good job with it. It may be a trope, but if you’re gonna do it, do it well And they did, and it was scary. I mean, it like, I certainly don’t think this I wasn’t that scared.  It’s not like it’s I didn’t have to get up and leave my living room or anything, but it is a scary movie. It’s a scary movie. Maybe I I feel like I’m trying to oversell it, and I’m not trying to oversell it. It’s just I wanna give it credit where credit is due. No. Yes. Because we’ve seen so many movies that, you know, take advantage of these cliches and these tropes and it’s just cheap and they don’t even really put much effort into it. You know, these the people behind this, you know, it really seems like they wanted to do well, and I think that they did.

Todd:  Mhmm. No. I I agree with you. I totally agree with you. We’re, like, 40 minutes into the movie now. You know, like I said before, I I still feel like we’re we’ve seen all this before, like you said too, but you’re right. It it’s got a It has a lot of promise at this point because we’re really feeling the mood, the atmosphere, and it’s really well done. And it’s not totally cliched in its presentation.  So then she goes to the basement, and in a perfect example of where the movie does subvert some tropes, we find out that sister death actually is like a spunky, surly lady with Yes. Chase Yes. Much in the basement. It becomes it’s very it’s very difficult to watch her in this film because she’s got these milky white eyes, you know, and she’s so silent in the beginning. She’s just staring at things and staring knowingly, and it’s, of course, it’s that blind spooky nun thing. Right. All the from this point on, the whole time later, you just can’t get this vision out of your head of her just like, well, lady, I got some spirit attached to you. Yeah.  You know, smoking her cigarette. It it still visually, she’s spooky to look at, but at

Craig:  that point,

Todd:  I’m like, oh, okay. Alright. And and and, again, we’re we’re coming up to an hour into the movie, and all these creepy things have happened. But, normally, by this point or at least early on, our protagonist is just trying to figure out what do I do about it? You know? How do I fix this? And she has just met up with this nun, and the nun just basically tells her what she should already know, which is, yep. This thing has attached itself to you. Mhmm. I think what she says is someone answered your call and now walks with you. Mhmm.  Alright. You know, see you later. Goodbye. And then some more creepy stuff happens.

Craig:  Well, and and she says something along the lines of, like, you have to fix what you did wrong or something

Todd:  like that. Not yet. That’s a little while.

Craig:  Oh, not yet. Oh, sorry.

Todd:  That’s an important point because that’s what I was waiting for, you know. I was expecting by this point, for her to get some clue as to, okay, where did it come from? Is this truly my father? Is this some other evil force? And at this point, she does drop a little hint, like like, I think she asks if it if it’s her father, she says. Because because she says something about the nun being able to see the shadows. The nun can see the shadows. And, and she asks, is it her father? She says, well, it, you know, it’s something, which Mhmm. Which made me go, oh, yeah. Oh, I I guess that’s interesting because you kind of assume it’s her father, but then you kinda wonder why her father’s creeping her the hell out.

Craig:  Right.

Todd:  And then, you know, you kind of have to be have it told to you it might not even be her father. But again, you’re thinking, does her father need help? You know, what does this mean? How is her father significant with this? And so, yeah, I just at this point, just a little too many unanswered questions for me, and certainly the main character, and so she’s still just kinda going about her business. Yeah. That’s why I kind of, at this point, started to really get impatient.

Craig:  Fair enough. I can see that. I I get it. And and I

Todd:  shut off the film and ran out of the room screaming, so I had to take a break.

Craig:  The nun tells her, at this point, you have siblings. Right? And she’s like, yeah. And she’s like, okay. Well, you’re gonna have to protect your siblings because they’re in trouble. Mhmm. And so Veronica looks at the cult excuse me, the occult encyclopedia that came with her Ouija board, which I thought was kind of hilarious. But That’s right. But but probably not unlikely.  Like and I like the way that it’s presented. Like, it’s the Ouija board and then, like, the occult encyclopedia. It’s all wrapped up in plastic set. She’s she probably just bought it at Target or whatever. It’s hilarious. But, you know, it

Todd:  totally looks like a book I I read. I mean, I probably had 3 or 4 of these kind of books. Oh, sure. The eighties that I had 1 on ghosts do just like this that I pour through. You know?

Craig:  I Oh, I looked at yeah. I looked at them at the library. I’m like

Todd:  You didn’t dare take them home, did you?

Craig:  No. Boys and girls, there used to be these big buildings called libraries where we had to go look at things. We couldn’t just get on the Internets. But, anyway, so she finds these, like, protection symbols, and, she draws them, and she, hangs them above the kids’ beds. A neighbor comes up to complain about excessive noise even though they haven’t been making excessive noise, and she also says that there are black stains appearing in her ceiling underneath Veronica’s room, which, you know, kind of comes up later because later on, Veronica lifts up her siblings beds and the mattresses have these black stains. Clearly just, you know, result of them being haunted or whatever. Gosh. And I don’t know.  I like, I’m looking through I took so many notes because that was one of the things, like, it seemed like things were constantly happening. Yeah. And, ultimately, it doesn’t they don’t really make that much difference. Oh. But but, you know, they’re, like, there there’s demonic shadows on the wall and then, the protection symbols that she hung up above the kids beds light on fire and burned and a ghostly hand throttles one of her sisters and, Veronica goes to, like, try to help and and then the girl is okay, but the girl is like, why were you strangling me? And I thought that this was actually a really interesting point in the movie because at this point I wondered Mhmm. Is there really something supernatural going on or is this chick just losing it? Yeah. Now obviously the movie is highly suggesting that something supernatural is at work here, but, it was an interesting, you know, suggestion that whether supernatural or not, maybe something’s going on and maybe Veronica is seeing it, but nobody else is. And maybe all of these things that are happening, maybe she’s doing it without knowing that she’s doing it.

Todd:  Yeah.

Craig:  And and I don’t I don’t know that ultimately that was what was going on. I really don’t think that that was I don’t think that was what was going on, but it was an interesting suggestion at least.

Todd:  Well, we’ll definitely come back to this, because there’s a later scene that I wanna talk about that, yeah, addresses what we’re talk what you’re talking about here. Before that scene, she finally after all this creepy stuff happens, she finally goes back to that sister again. And this time, I think she seeks her out. She goes to the basement, and the sister gives her the advice. She says, you have to you you have to close the door that you opened. Mhmm. She’s like, well, how do I do that? She says, you have to do right what you did wrong. The answer is in the book.  And it’s like, oh, okay. Cool. And I’m I’m sitting here thinking, what book? Is she talking about the Bible or you don’t

Craig:  whatever like that? No. No. No. No.

Todd:  No. She’s talking about that cheap, like, comic book thing that came with her her Ouija board The list of instructions is is kind of a letdown, but that’s funny. I thought anyway Yeah, so she goes and the of course the pages this book are burned up They were burned up in their seance, and I thought oh the pages are burned Well, she just goes to the store and buys another one and she comes back and she’s finally able to read it. So quite a bit of detective work. She had to do there and and she reads it and it basically says you have to say goodbye to the spirit at the end of the seance or the spirit won’t leave. So, okay. So then she runs to her friends, and this was an interesting bit because her friends are having some party over at one of their houses. And Veronica is getting I think this might be shortly after the stains under their beds.  For some reason, she’s feeling like this is the day. Like, if I don’t do something today, we’re in serious danger. And so she runs to this party at her friend, Rose’s house, and Rose’s, like, not even interested in hearing her out. And Veronica’s kinda going nuts, and she runs in and she pulls Diana out of the kitchen where she’s making out with some guy. And Diana doesn’t wanna have anything to do with her either. And, basically, all these people at the party are just like, who’s this crazy girl? And they all boot her out. And as they’re booting her out, Rosa says to her at the door, I think Veronica says something, like, why don’t you wanna listen to me? What’s going on? And Rosa says, don’t you remember what you whispered to me on the you said you were going to die Todd. And that creeped us out, and so we’re staying away from

Craig:  you or something like that. Right.

Todd:  And I’m like, okay. Well, you’re great friends. You know, first of all. Okay.

Craig:  Thanks, bestie.

Todd:  You got my back and everything. But then I was thinking, like, you’re going to die today. Does she mean on that very day that she was running to their party?

Craig:  Or did she mean Yeah. I think No. I think that’s what they meant.

Todd:  Okay. Well, that Yeah. Alright. So so that’s kinda what I thought it meant. And so I was thinking, jeez. Alright. This is getting interesting. So what’s gonna happen to her today? And then as things unfold and are going on, you know, you’re you’re presented with that question.  Is Veronica really gonna die here? And then why would she say that? How would she predicted her death? And then what you just said earlier about, well, maybe she’s doing all this and she’s kind of going psycho came into my head. And I thought, oh, okay. So, you know, she’s kind of planned all this out and all this maybe is kind of either going on in her head or she’s doing all this stuff, but it’s nothing supernatural at all. Maybe she’s traumatized by her father’s death. You know, that kind of thing. And I’m thinking back to how everything could possibly be explained. You know, except for the visions, which she’s only seeing. So yeah.  It it was an interesting point in the movie, I I felt, but really shitty friends. Yeah.

Craig:  Yeah. She she needs to get new

Todd:  friends. They were up there were up with her through the seance and all that, and they won’t even stick with her afterwards. Yeah. They saw some messed up stuff go down, and then they’re, like, I don’t even care anymore.

Craig:  Well, this is leading up to the end because when she leaves that party, some weird cinematography goes on where, like, she passes herself on the street and, like, then this it’s I don’t I have no idea. I am so not technical in this regard, but, like, the the film kind of slows down a little bit as she passes herself on the street and notices it. And then when she turns to look I mean, I I assume it’s her. It’s somebody who looks just like her in the same exact clothes. We don’t see the other person or girl’s face, but she she passes her and she stops and she turns around, and then the other people in the background are, like, walking backwards, like

Todd:  Mhmm.

Craig:  Weird things are going on.

Todd:  That’s so good.

Craig:  And she goes yeah. It looks really good. It was really cool. And so she goes to her mom’s bar and begs her mom to close the bar and take them away. She’s like, you’ve just you’ve gotta get us out of here. If we just get out of here, it’ll be okay. But her mom, of course, is very busy and, you know, just kind of blows her off as one might their daughter comes to tell them that ghosts are chasing them or whatever. Mhmm.  But that leads up to the finale where okay. The whole reason that she went to that party was because the nun had told her you have to do right what you did wrong. So she wanted the other girls who had done the seance with her to do it again so they could say goodbye. But, of course, they refused and kicked her out. So instead She’s a she’s a teenager, so I will forgive her flaws and reasoning and logic, but she thinks that it will be a good idea to have her sisters fill in. And she she gives the the little magazine occult encyclopedia to Antonio, the cute little boy, and shows him the pictures of the protection symbols and says draw these on the wall. And he’s all excited because he gets to draw on the wall, But, oh, Todd, just little things that I liked about this movie, like, she gives him it and she shows him and she’s, like, draw this on the wall. And he’s, like, okay.  And then he goes and he’s drawing them all over the wall, but then he kind of gets bored drawing the same thing, so he flips through the pages until he comes to a new symbol, and it’s a symbol of invocation. And he draws that on the wall. Yeah. And as silly as that is and as silly as it sounds, you know, like, that’s totally what would happen. It’s like your little your little kid brother is totally gonna be bored and obviously has no idea what they’re doing, so you accidentally get a symbol of invocation on

Todd:  the wall. And and let’s let’s really doubt to hope that the universe cares at the artistic quality of these symbols. I mean, that he took some serious artistic liberties with these symbols in the book by the fact that he’s, you know, 4. Yeah.

Craig:  But he’s so cute. He’s so cute.

Todd:  You just think that, oh my god. What are you even thinking? This this woman has totally lost it. Like

Craig:  Yeah. But I I mean, even, you know, this is just it it it’s scary. You know, Anytime that you have children, especially endearing children that you really care about, not just annoying kids that you don’t care, but endearing children that you care about. You know, you put them in jeopardy. That’s that’s tense and scary, and so you’ve got these 3 girls sitting around, the Ouija board and it says you the the rules or whatever say you have to say goodbye and then you can sing some sort of chant or just, you know, some sort of quiet song, to usher them out or whatever, and they don’t know what to sing because they don’t know any chance. But the little boy’s like, you should sing this jingle. He had sang it earlier in the movie. It was actually really cute.  Like, he was singing it over over again, and it annoyed Veronica. And she was like, oh my god. Shut up. But they all know it. They all know it. They all know it. So, they sing this jingle for, like it’s like dishwashing detergent or something. Yeah.  I know. It’s so cute.

Todd:  It’s really it’s really cool, actually.

Craig:  It’s really cute. But then, of course, there’s all kinds of scary noises, and the doors are slamming and the candles blow out and the Ouija board splits opens again. And again, they’re using a drinking glass as the planchette and it flips over and it rolls towards the bedroom door. A hand grabs out through the mattress, and all of the lights go out, and that’s when Veronica finally calls the police, and and that brings us back to the beginning.

Todd:  Yeah. And at that point, I thought I thought, wow. That worked. You know, how how many times in a horror movie does somebody try to call the police and the phone’s dead or they don’t understand or, you know, something gets cut off or the police don’t believe them?

Craig:  I was like, wow. The I forgot. Yeah.

Todd:  The police actually did come.

Craig:  Yeah. The the cops come.

Todd:  And so now, we’re kind of back at the beginning and we’re wondering because the where it had left off, you know, where it had jumped Todd 3 days earlier, was the cops coming into this apartment and going down the hall and opening a door and seeing something horrifying. Just a horrified look on their faces. So we’re wondering what is what is it gonna be that they see that’s so horrifying? We know it’s gonna be something. And that’s kind of cool. Like, I thought it was exciting to know that we truly, the cops, were gonna come and they were gonna find something. Now you just wanna know what? So anyway, she goes and grabs the girls and, is looking for Antonio. He is it takes a little while to find him because this demon shadowy thing keeps lifting him up and pulling him into rooms. And finally, she finds him cowered up somewhere, picks him up and carries him through the house and shouts at the girls, come follow me.  And they go to the door, and she ushers the girls out the door, and the girls say, where’s Antonio? And she’s, like, looking down, and she’s holding him. But when she looks at a mirror at the end of the hall, there’s nobody in her arms. Mhmm. So she shuts the door and locks the girls out so they can’t come back in, and she goes back in to find him. She eventually all this stuff happens. She goes into, the bathroom and it’s like he’s in there, it’s like he’s in the tub, but he gets sucked in. But then the mirror breaks and and she she because she smashed her head into the mirror and a piece of the mirror falls down, and it’s like a knife. And again, that evoked, again, I was thinking, oh, okay.  This is that human sacrifice thing. Like where how is this coming together? You know, because she picks up this knife, and she’s squeezing it so hard the blood is dripping from her fingers, and she goes into, I think, her bedroom again. And the wardrobe is in there, and, sure enough, Antonio is curled up in the corner of the wardrobe with his fingers in his ears, chanting her name over and over and over again. And this is where we have our like Kaiser soze moment I would call it yeah like where suddenly we’re getting all these flashbacks and audio clips of earlier things in the movie that are all coming to her at once here. And I guess they’re supposed to piece together to to let us sit on a big twist or a big secret or something. At least, that is the impression that it gives. Right? Mhmm. And she’s looking in a mirror the whole time she’s doing this, and then the the mirror in the the image in the mirror is kind of doing its own thing.  You know, where she’s doing another thing. It’s like she’s facing the evil version of herself. And at some point she said, it’s me. It’s me. Mhmm. And I thought, oh my gosh. That’s it. Right? It has been her all along.  And I thought that is what all of this was supposed to be telling us, and maybe it still was, but she basically raises this knife blade mirror shard to her neck, and it looks like she is cut slitting her own throat as she falls backwards. But then it just zooms in on her face and and it just freezes there. You get kind of a point of view shot from her eyes, and this dark figure has come over her suddenly. And it’s it comes across, you know, the stars from blah blah, you know, from her ceiling. Again, like you said earlier, it’s just this really cool imagery the way this is all flowing together. And it’s got her suspended in the air as it’s throwing its it’s it’s pushing its hand down her throat for some reason. I’m thinking, oh, okay. I mean, this is cool and it’s creepy, but what is this now? You know? At this point, the cops burst into the room and what he sees with this horrified look on her face, which his face, which I thought for sure was gonna be her having slit her own throat on the ground is really and truly herself suspended in the middle of the air, you know, by some unseen force for a little while while she’s gagging until she finally falls to the ground.  Mhmm. And so at that point, I was just I don’t know, man. I was just kind of a little confused. Okay. Well, like, it was supernatural. Yeah. I mean, I guess it still could have been her. Was she possessed? Was she still kinda going crazy? Was this demon making her do these other things? But at the end of the day it wasn’t really her so right yeah I I can I kind of left my head scratching at that especially because that previous scene just seemed really intent on on revealing some kind of twist to me you know but it I don’t know? I I am I wrong about this diet, Twenties? No.

Craig:  No. No. I don’t think you’re wrong. I I I think that it was meant to be a little ambiguous. Mhmm. At least the way that I interpreted it, there certainly was something supernatural working against her, you know, some sort of evil destructive force. Now how much of that was it, you know, doing things or how much of it was it manipulating her into doing things, I’m not entirely sure. It it seemed to me that whatever whatever evil force or spirit or whatever this was, I I read it as though it were it was trying to convince her in the end that it had been her that was doing it, I don’t really think that it was.  But either way, I mean, I I kind of like the ambiguity because either way, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter, you know, like this thing, whatever it was, attached itself to her through, this seance that they did and it, you know, was in her life regardless of how it affected those things. But, yeah, I mean, ultimately, you know, it was just kind of sad, you know. I was sad to see poor Veronica die and they do, you know, some text at the end, right, kind of explaining that the police found her and they saw this and they put the supernatural stuff in their report and the family eventually had to move because things kept happening or whatever. I don’t know. I mean, I I’ve I’ve referenced The Conjuring several times, and and we’ve never even talked about that before in its entirety. But it’s a good movie too. We’ll talk about it someday, but it it falls into that category to me. You know, I think that there are and it makes sense that there’s there people are interested in these kind of unexplained or un explainable stories or or stories that appear to involve, the supernatural because that’s just something that we either, you know, a lot of people just discredit it outright and okay, you know, logical people, I get that, you know, and then there are people like me who are skeptical, but not entirely willing to write those things off because who knows? Stuff happens.  I don’t know. But, it’s it’s I think that it capitalizes on that fear that even though it’s probably pretty unlikely, it maybe it could happen, and that’s, you know, that’s a little bit frightening. And and I thought that this movie did a good job of capitalizing on it, it, and I I wanna say again because I I think that it’s significant. The young lady who played Veronica, I just think she did just such a good job. I mean, that’s you know, I I’ve talked before about, you know, I do community theater. But, you know, like, when you think about it from the perspective of an actor this girl had to carry this whole movie on her shoulders.

Todd:  Oh, yeah.

Craig:  And and she did and she did it well and she was endearing, she was believable, I felt for her and, I I liked it overall. It wasn’t amazing. It’s not like it’s one of my favorite movies I’ve ever seen, but I thought that it was a good movie, and it deserves, you know, it it’s it’s won some awards and stuff, and I think that it’s at least deserving of some discussion and some recognition. He he they did a good job. Yeah.

Todd:  I agree. It deserves a claim for being a well made film. It has a lot of really neat moments in it. I mean, things that are just visual that we haven’t even described. There’s, like, a thing with, like, a painting in there of these dogs that are, like, leaping in front of, like, an in a in a scene. And one of the more intense moments of the film as she walks by it like a couple of the dogs and they’re like barking and moving but it’s only like for a split second before the painting Mhmm. Falls off the wall. I mean, there’s so much going on.  It’s so subtle. And I would even say that for the CGI that there was in this film, it was Todd. Mhmm. To the point where I thought I think some things that I’m pretty sure were actually CGI still to me almost looked like practical effects. Mhmm. The the line was very blurred there, and that matters, you know, when you’ve seen enough horror movies that we have. And it helps keep the film not looking cheap, You know? Because nowadays, CGI makes a film look cheap. Yep.  And so, yeah, this it’s so well made. It’s so fresh. You’re right. The character is good. That actress, this is her only major film credit at all. She she really did carry the film. Did I care a lot about her? I guess just because it ends up being so tragic, it’s really quite sad. Because a lot of times with horror films, there’s a moral there’s a morality to them, like somebody’s messing with something they were supposed to know better or at the very least, you know, usually it’s some terrible person that these terrible things are happening to.  In this case, it’s just some girl like anybody playing around the Ouija board that she bought Right. Freaking Target. You know, so she really deserve to have any of this happen to her. And it as it sort of turns out, it didn’t even have any connection with her dead father or anything like that. Even though there’s a case to be made here, I think, that perhaps the movie is trying to draw some connection with maybe this is like when I was thinking about the fact that this could be her in in her head Maybe this is the way that she deals with the grief and then she just kind of goes crazy and maybe that at the at its core is what’s behind the true story. You know, a girl who’d kinda went psycho, because she lost a family member. And as it turns out, like, she didn’t lose her dad in the, you know, the actual event the actual case. In the actual case, yeah, this girl did kind of, like, start going a little nuts after her Ouija board, and she started getting sick.  And they, you know, took her to a mental a mental institution. They said physically, she was okay, but mentally, she was having some problems. And then eventually, she died. And then all of the supernatural stuff that went in the police report or whatever was everything that happened afterwards like you said like that apartment just seemed to be haunted afterwards And we just get a very small hint of that in this movie Because it does linger on the detective at the end a little bit he goes he’s kind of like agape at what he saw. And he’s wandering through the house a little bit afterwards, and he goes to pick up her photograph. And he drops it immediately because it’s, like, burns him. And he looks down at the photo, and the photo starts burning. It’s a photo Veronica.  The photo starts burning around her face, just on its own. And apparently, this is one of the incidents based on the probably the only thing in this movie that was, like, directly parallel or whatever to what actually happened. And that apparently, the the police did see a photograph that had been burned even though the frame itself was entirely intact. And they thought how in the world would a photograph burn inside of the frame like that. So, yeah. And that was an interesting image to leave on. And in fact, the film does leave on it because, then the next, I think, the the shot before the credits is that photograph, like, having been burned suddenly, like, deburring itself, like, reversing itself. I don’t know.  I don’t know what it means, but, I’ll I’ll stand with you that it’s a good movie. It’s not the best movie I’ve ever seen. Right. It’s certainly not the scariest, but I enjoyed watching it. Yeah. It was fun.

Craig:  Me too. Yeah. And I, you know, people who like scary movies, you know, I I I appreciate I feel like we’re very worldly and that we watch these foreign films. If if if you’re willing to, read the subtitles, and, you know, if if you’re into these kind of movies, I I would definitely recommend it. I think it’s really well made. And I I wanna thank my cousin Grant for recommending it. Now that he and I have reconnected, maybe we’ll start to have more dialogue and maybe do some more movies that he has talked about. I also wanna say I hate to break the illusion for any of you, listeners out there, but we do typically record these episodes a few weeks in advance

Todd:  before Boy, you’re really letting on all our secrets out Todd.

Craig:  All our secrets. I’m sorry. You’re the editor. Edit it out. I don’t I don’t but, today, as we’re sitting here recording this, would have been my grandmother’s 83rd birthday, and we lost her, last week. This movie has nothing to do with her. Reminds me nothing of her, But, yeah, it’s her birthday, and I miss her already. And, so I just wanted to give a shout out to my grandma Barb.  I love you, grandma Barb.

Todd:  This one’s dedicated to grandma Barb. Just, Craig, lay off the Ouija board. Yeah. Keep your memories of her intact.

Craig:  Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. She had a great long life, you know, 21 grandkids, 22 great grandkids. She left an amazing legacy. I don’t need to contact her on the Ouija board. I’m sure wherever she is, she is doing just fine. So, anyway, thank you again for listening.  If you enjoyed this episode, please check us out. You can find us all over the place. We’re on Stitcher. We’re on Google Play, iTunes. We’re on Facebook. Anywhere that you can find your favorite Todd cast, you’ll find us. Just, give us a Google search if nothing else. And until next week, I am Craig

Todd:  And I’m Todd.

Craig:  With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.

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