A good horror film must be both suitably terrifying and have some sort of coherent theme holding it together. This Argentine film supplies both and in its ninety minutes running time delivers a powerful jolt of fear. Admittedly it does cheat by stretching its central explanation broadly to cover a wide swathe of otherwise disparate paranormal phenomena and there are too many jump scares. I can probably even guess where it got its inspiration from. But I like how its characters take a serious, grown-up approach to the weirdness they encounter and have their heads screwed on right, for the most part at least.

A housewife in Buenos Aires is haunted by weird noises coming from her kitchen sink. Her husband Juan suggests that it may be due to renovation works being done by their neighbor Walter. Later that night after his wife has gone into the bathroom, Juan is disturbed by loud thumping noises and believes that Walter is responsible. Later he realizes that the sound is coming from his own bathroom and witnesses his wife levitating in the air and being slammed repeatedly into the walls. Flashbacks reveal other supernatural phenomena in two nearby houses. Walter is disturbed by a tall, naked creature who hides under his bed and in his closet. A boy from across the street is killed by bus but then seemingly crawls out of his grave to return home. Police superintendent Funes is at a complete loss at how to deal with these cases. He calls in an old friend Jano, a retired coroner who has encountered similar incidents before. He in turn meets Dr. Albreck, a psychiatrist who Walter had begged to help her but then Walter seemingly disappeared. They call in another expert and the three decide to each spend the night in one of the houses to investigate the phenomena.

This is a serious film with plausibly ordinary people. That’s already a fair difference from the usual cringey American teens as victims with their dumb antics. So when the housewife smashes her face repeatedly into the tiled wall while Juan ineffectually tries to stop her, it’s an immediate shock to our senses. One pet peeve of mine in horror stories is that the authorities are often absent and that ruins my immersion. Here it is Funes who calls in his contact. His officers are scared and don’t know what to do. He himself worries about his career and how he will explain himself to his superiors. It’s easy to sympathize with his fervent wish that all this strangeness will just go away. Director and scriptwriter Demián Rugna also calls upon another neat trick. All three of the specialists are elderly types with a professorial air. They calmly approach the terrifying situation as if they’ve seen it all before and this reassures the audience that the adults are present and in charge. But of course as this is indeed a horror film, it all goes to hell anyway.

It does rely on jump scares and the now you see it now you don’t effect. But that’s not too bad as Rugna doesn’t repeat the same type of imagery too often. It does also mean there’s some lack of consistency. For example the first housewife apparently hears voices in the water pipes talking about killing her. That never comes up again and no one else hears the same thing. The film uses the catch all explanation, spoiler warning here, that the phenomena is caused by hostile extradimensional creatures. That’s why I think this might have been at least partially inspired by the Stranger Things franchise. That works well enough for me but I wonder if that might make it a little less scary for some viewers. I was disappointed that in the end the experts, despite keeping their cool, are no more able to resolve the crisis than anyone else. Yes, American teenagers are dumb for running around headless chickens when the shit hits the fan. But when people are dropping like flies and there’s seemingly nothing you can do about it, maybe you should be running around like crazy instead of being all calm and collected about it.

I’d rate this as a very effective horror film. It does the job of scaring the audience without making you roll your eyes at the stupidity of its premise. I really like Funes as the relatable ordinary person who has to deal with this shit. He starts with being afraid of what it might do to his career and ends with just wanting to walk away alive. It’s no wonder someone like Guillermo del Toro wants to remake it for Hollywood.