24/08/2020 - Shooting on the Spanish filmmaker’s new horror movie, written by Carlos Vermut, finished a few days ago after the hiatus caused by the health crisis

The fact that Paco Plaza and Carlos Vermut, two masters at triggering restlessness and disquiet, have joined forces and pooled their skills is much more than excellent news. The former finished last 5 August shooting his La abuela [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paco Plaza
film profile], with a script written by the author of a recent gem of Spanish cinema, Magical Girl [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carlos Vermut
film profile]. As fans of the maker of Eye for an Eye [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paco Plaza
film profile] may have guessed, this is a horror film that draws heavily on psychological tension. Shooting started in Madrid last February, shortly after which it was interrupted by the viral tsunami, but it resumed in summer and the film has just entered the next stage: post-production.

As the movie synopsis explains, Susana is forced to leave her life in Paris, where she works as a model, and return to Madrid because her grandmother has just had a stroke. Years before, when the girl’s parents died, Pilar brought her up as if she were her own daughter. Susana needs to find someone to look after the old woman, but what was to be spending just a few days with a relative turns into a terrifying nightmare. The film stars newcomer Almudena Amor and Brazilian Vera Valdez, Coco Chanel’s muse.

Carlos Vermut explains that “writing the script for this film has given me the chance to have a go at horror, something I had always wanted to do. I think it’s one of the genres where innovation is being felt the most and actually it’s the ideal place to conduct an in-depth analysis of today’s reality. La abuela tackles one of society’s biggest fears today, one that we conceal and try to dodge: old age.”

This is also a new shared project for Paco Plaza and producer Enrique López Lavigne, who worked together on the successful film Verónica [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Paco Plaza
film profile]. The first time Paco talked about the project with Enrique, he said: “This is a film about possession where old age is a devil, a real one, and it lives with us daily whether we want it or not.” The filmmaker believes “this film genre is the best means to tackle the big issues that worry us the most: it allows us to talk about reality using codes that provide an unequalled creative freedom.”

López Lavigne, who was also the producer of Quién te cantará [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Carlos Vermut
film profile], the latest work directed by Vermut, believes that “with Verónica, Paco started to walk a path that tinged horror films with reality, a naturalism that we thought had disappeared from this film genre and that we considered repetitive and oblivious to the reality we live in. With La abuela, their aim is to continue further along the same path. The idea is to continue analysing our own life and our relationship with our environment, letting horror flourish naturally in unexpected territory, because that is what fear is: the capacity to confront the irrational from a rational perspective.”

La abuela, shot in Paris and Madrid, is produced by Apache Films in association with Atresmedia Cine and Sony Pictures International Productions. Atresmedia and Amazon Prime Video are also part of the project.

(Translated from Spanish by Marcos Randulfe)