Shiver

I’ve made it a goal to watch a horror movie every day this month and then to write down a few thoughts on each of them.  If you’ve seen any of these films, feel free to share a comment or two.

If you ask me (and I know you haven’t, but if you did) I would say that European filmmakers seem to understand horror movies better than American filmmakers. So far this month I’ve watched seven films – most of them from Europe, and they’ve all (barring the one clunker so far, Markof the Devil) been very good, frightening even.  And I’m not usually scared by horror movies – but perhaps that’s because most of them that I’ve seen to this point have been American horror films.

So why is that the European movies seem so much better?  I’m not a professional film critic, but I’d suggest that they 1) have tighter scripts with better writing, 2) pay more attention to the art of the scene, 3) rely less on “gotcha” and gore scenes – and 4) work at establishing the mood – the tension that makes a horror movie scary.  They take time to develop the discomfort of each scene rather than lurching immediately to a bloody evisceration.

Shiver the 2008 Spanish horror film (Eskalofrío) is an example of this carefully crafted tension.  The movie has a simple plot, one that we’ve probably seen before:  new kid in town is blamed for a series of strange and brutal murders – but the movie plays itself out with carefully paced revelations and twists.  And Shiver knows how to keep something back.  Just when you think you’ve got the movie figured out the director, Isidro Ortiz, reveals something unexpected that increases the fear factor. 

But let me interrupt myself…

Shiver is a great movie - at least until the last 45 seconds.

The little coda seems more like an American Hollywood movie, an ending tacked on without any consideration for the rest of the film.  It doesn’t fit with the style or the rest of the picture.  But if you can ignore that last little scene, Shiver is a great film filled with beauty and terror.

And with a surprising tenderness that I really didn’t expect.  Young Junio Valverde does a great job of portraying the film’s hero in moments of real terror.  And yet when the creature is revealed he is able to demonstrate an uncommon tenderness. 

Perhaps it this also that sets European horror films apart from American, the range of authentic human emotions (even if they’re grossly exaggerated as in Sheitan).

Or perhaps I’m just over-generalizing.