"Abuela" makes grandmother rhyme with terror and Alzheimer's

• A young model comes to live with her mentally and physically failing grandmother.

• The latter hides strange powers under harmless exteriors.

• "Abuela" favors a scary atmosphere rather than gore effects to make the viewer shiver.

The heroine grandmother of

, the newcomer from Paco Plaza discovered and rewarded at Gérardmer with the Jury Prize, has her own way of spoiling her granddaughter.

This physically and mentally failing grandma forces the young model to share her Madrid apartment and quickly turns out to be much less fragile than one might have thought.

The co-creator of the [REC] saga knows how to chill the viewer's blood.

It's even his trademark.

"For this story, I thought about old age and the fears it entails, in particular that of losing my mind which I was confronted with in my family", he confides to

.

The spectral Vera Valdez, grandmother who would scare the wolf, does not spare the sculptural Almudena Amor, which she holds in an increasingly tight trap.

Touching then threatening

“It's hard to see the people we love change to the point that they end up seeming almost unknown to us, insists Paco Plaza.

Alzheimer's disease is a terrifying destructive process when accompanying loved ones.

The emaciated old lady with the bearing of a queen imbues the whole of the film with a presence that is at first touching to become more and more distressing, even downright threatening.

This heroine is all the more creepy as she looks frail in front of her granddaughter full of life whose energy will decline oddly.

“There is a

side to this story,” admits Paco Plaza.

Like the authors in many episodes of this mythical series, I had fun with the daily lives of ordinary characters to create horror.

This should promote audience identification.

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There is no gore in this tale flirting with ancient legends and a classic fantasy that the filmmaker dusts off.

"A heavy atmosphere can be as scary as bloody effects," insists Paco Plaza.

I favored the viewer's imagination rather than shocking images.

The director takes the opportunity to chisel his staging playing on mirror effects as on the dark corridors of the grandmother's home as well as with a soundtrack rich in uncomfortable effects.

"The hidden powers of women and the secrets they communicate to each other have something intriguing and ideal to feed genre cinema", insists Paco Plaza.

offers many mysteries to put in your mouth.

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