"The horror genre is the most effective way to express (...) things that we have in our heads", explained to AFP the 49-year-old Spanish director, during the Gérardmer festival, where his film received a Special Jury Prize.

"La Abuela" plays on one of the most widespread anxieties, the fear of aging, through the story of a young Spanish model, Susana (Almudena Amor), who has to return urgently to Madrid to take care of of her sick grandmother (ex-Brazilian model and actress Vera Valdez).

In the closed doors of a bourgeois apartment, cluttered with memories, with creaking parquet floors and slamming doors, a troubled relationship will develop between the elderly and bedridden lady and her granddaughter.

Faced with this grandmother rendered mute by illness, and the supernatural events that seem to surround her, the young woman will quickly lose her footing, in an atmosphere full of psychological tension, partly inspired by Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby".

Slick but classic and without much surprise in its form, the film is very far from the brilliant coup of Paco Plaza, the film "[Rec]" which in 2008 broke the codes of the genre with long sequence shots and an aspect of live documentary.

"Any film is a bit of an autobiography", underlines Paco Plaza, who wanted in "La Abuela" to tell old age "as a form of possession", tested by a "personal experience", the Alzheimer's disease from which he suffered. one of his aunts.

"It's all fiction"

With his games of mirrors and back and forth between the grandmother and her granddaughter, which blur the gap between the generations, Paco Plaza expresses "the fear of no longer recognizing a close person" and "the family heritage, which one cannot escape".

Horror "is the most effective way to approach the things we have in our heads in a poetic and metaphorical way", pleads the director, fed with genre films from his childhood in Spain, thanks to a TV show , "Mis terrores favoritos", which aired classics.

Spanish director Paco Plaza (c), Spanish actress Almudena Amor (l) and Brazilian actress Vera Valdez (d), during the presentation of the film "Abuela" at the San Sebatian Film Festival on September 23 2021 ANDER GILLENEA AFP/Archives

"Every child of my generation has seen + Frankenstein +, + Dracula +, + giallos + (Italian genre films), zombie films... For me, it was the happiest day of the week! We were familiar with horror was present in everyday life," he says.

"I thank my parents for not forbidding me to see them. My mother who said to me: + Don't worry, it's only fiction, you can benefit from the experience, this n is not real+".

He now believes that horror has nothing to envy to "high culture".

"Rosemary's Baby" (1968) by Roman Polanski?

"There is no better film at the level of realization".

"The Exorcist" (1974) by William Friedkin?

"You can't find a better scenario".

Stephen King, multi-adapted to the cinema, starting with "Shining"?

"He is the equal of Borges or Cortazar, a fabulous writer", judges Paco Plaza.

"For me, there is no difference" between genre film and auteur cinema, he adds.

"These are films where you can have fun, learn. And many B films are masterpieces for me".

© 2022 AFP