|
|
 |
The Package
|
|
|
The StoryLara
is the host of 99.9, an occult-oriented radio talk show. She learns one day that Victor, her estranged lover, has been
found dead in a small backwoods village under mysterious circumstances.
Shortly thereafter Lara receives a video tape from an anonymous source
that fills her in on her lover’s activities in the days before he died,
during which he conducted freaky experiments in an attempt to contact the dead. Lara
travels to the village where Victor met his death, and finds a largely
apathetic populace. She soldiers
on, however, making a point of staying in the same hotel Victor did.
The place, it turns out, is run by a creepy dude who in his spare time
makes weird sculptures out of the hair of his guests and who apparently had an
affair with Ramon during his last days. Lara
also meets a woman interned in an insane asylum who owns the house where Victor
breathed his last--the place, the woman claims, is haunted by the spirits of
people who’ve died inside, and whose faces have been subsequently imprinted
in the walls. Apparently the
woman’s daughter runs the house together with her sadistic husband, who
throws Lara off the premises when she tries to investigate. One
night, however, the woman who owns the house in question busts out of the
asylum and leaves a note for Lara imploring her to meet her at the “house
with the faces”. This Lara does,
to confront the woman, her daughter, and the explanation of her lover’s
killing...and it’s not pretty! |
|
|
The DirectionThis
film is atmospheric to a fault, with an aura of brooding mystery equal to the
best work of Pupi Avati (in particular THE HOUSE WITH THE LAUGHING WINDOWS and
ZEDER). That’s not to say that
it’s in any way a “quiet” horror movie; on the contrary, 99.9 contains
some profoundly disquieting scenes of violence, including a nasty shovel
whacking and documentary footage of animals being slaughtered that adequately
demonstrate the filmmaker’s unrivalled flair for cinematic psychosis.
It helps, of course, that Villaronga is an unusually skilled craftsman
who creates extremely vivid and affecting images that tend to stick in the
viewer’s mind (whether he/she likes it or not!). If
Villaronga were as secure in crafting a narrative, then this film would be an
all-time classic...but alas, he’s not. Or
at least, not here; Villaronga’s
self-penned films IN A GLASS CAGE and EL MAR boasted tightly constructed
storylines, but he developed 99.9 from a pre-existing script that admittedly
didn’t engage him fully. The
mystery at the film’s center leaves much to be desired: the nature of the
explanation (if not the precise methodology) is revealed early on, meaning the
many red herrings the heroine subsequently confronts (i.e.
the question of whether the hotel proprietor shot her lover or not) are
ultimately pointless distractions in a film that could easily stand to lose 10
to 15 of its 106 minutes. |
|
|
Vital Statistics99.9
|
| Select another review! | |
