Rodrigo Fiallega is the latest in a long line of filmmakers to attempt to add their own spin on the possession story. Since William Friedkin’s The Exorcist terrified a generation, stories about demonic possessions have never gone away. Many seek to try and replicate exactly what made that film so iconic. A few take a different path, strike out and try for originality, and Fiallega’s Spanish language film, The Exorcism of Carmen Fairias, falls into the latter category.
Opening with the death of her mother who cryptically begs her for forgiveness, Carmen (Camila Sodi) discovers that she has inherited her grandmother’s house, a place the young woman had thought lost years earlier. After a visit to the property to assess its condition, Carmen finds a pile of video tape cassettes all cryptically labelled. Carmen begins watching the tapes and is confused to find footage of her grandmother in what appear to be rituals of exorcisms. A journalist by trade, Carmen senses a story and begins to dig into the history and unknowingly sets herself on a collision course with both her past and future.
Although Carmen’s husband Julián (Juan Pablo Castañeda) initially accompanies her to her grandmother’s house, he quickly leaves Carmen and their dog to go back to work. It is only once he has gone that the creepy elements begin to happen. Prior to this there have been several red flags – the door lock being filled with wax being a big one – but Carmen has ignored them. Once alone, the house takes on a different atmosphere and she quickly finds herself in over her head, and yet still refuses to fully acknowledge or believe what is unfolding. With the main character so blasé about her circumstances, it is left to our obligatory priest, or Padre, (Juan Carlos Colombo) to instil fear into the audience. Padre has ties to Carmen’s grandmother and through him we learn about the work that the pair did and the formidable entity that left him blind. There’s a brilliant sequence where Padre is left alone in the property temporarily and something spooky happens; finally we have a character on screen in a horror movie who reacts how we all would – he gets the heck out of there.
In terms of ‘scares’, Fiallega sidesteps the over the top jump scares, instead favouring to populate his movie with an eerie atmosphere. The bulk of the traditional horror comes in the form of the video tapes that Carmen uncovers. As she settles down to watch them, we as the viewers are right there with her, and as she goes further down the pile, they get more and more disturbing. A great amount of work has gone into these video tapes, making sure that they look as authentically aged as possible. Cue lots of tracking problems and distorted audio. The way in which Fiallega chooses to frame these scenes is reminiscent of Ringu and oddly, the first Silent Hill game. It’s subtle work, but it does subconsciously link things in the audience’s head and make them bristle a little.
Much of The Exorcism of Carmen Farias sees the eponymous Carmen on her own. Outside of her interviews with Padre and a brief encounter with her husband, the film is a lot of Carmen wandering the house all alone. Mexican actor Camila Sodi does a fantastic job at holding the viewer’s attention, drawing them into Carmen before exposing some real vulnerability as we learn of all the tragedies of her past. If losing her mother wasn’t enough grief for one person to handle, Carmen is also living with having lost her unborn child in-utero. This loss becomes a key plot point. Carmen is haunted by dreams surrounding the event, and it explains the strained dynamic with her husband Julián. Sodi handles this situation in a respectful and touching way.
Although the story is different to the usual possession yarn, The Exorcism of Carmen Farias shows its hand too early, revealing the direction that the plot will move towards. Although this is likely to go over the head of uninitiated horror fans, those that have been around the horror block a few times may be able to easily predict where Fiallega is going. Worse still, after having its intentions exposed early in the game, the film deliberately ambles to its conclusion. The finale as a whole is effective, but too much time is spent getting there and many might find themselves fatigued by the time it begins.
The Exorcism of Carmen Farias
Summary
Some exemplary ingredients work hard to rework an overdone story into something fresh, but an over-reliance of filling air time with very little makes The Exorcism of Carmen Farias a slightly dull affair.
The Exorcism of Carmen Farias was reviewed at Arrow Video FrightFest.
