The last great Spanish success of Netflix It has been ‘The Snow Girl’, a thriller about the kidnapping of a girl during the Cabalgata de los Reyes Magos. The starting point of ‘infested’the new Spanish film on the platform, is somewhat the reverse of that one, since the sudden appearance of a young woman who had been presumed dead for several months is the great point of narrative impulse.
Of course, the most striking thing about ‘Infiesto’ is that the beginning of the film coincides with the moment in which Pedro Sanchez announced the State of Alarm in our country in response to the coronavirus pandemic. This leads to the fact that the film is located at a very specific moment that makes everything related to the investigation even more rarefied, as if the possibility of the end of the world hovered in the environment.
Moral alarm state
The fact that the story is located mainly in the Asturian mining basin fits in very well, since it is an area whose years of maximum splendor are already behind us, now giving the sensation of a slow but inexorable decline. This feeling of emptiness extends to all levels, since the particularities of the chosen historical moment mean that the streets of the city are also empty, thus promoting that gloomy touch that suits the movie so well.
This leads to the setting work being one of the strong points of ‘Infiesto’, since Patxi Amezcuathe screenwriter and director of the film, uses these empty scenes to link them to a kind of moral depression that gradually grows in what happens on the screen until it is time to solve the mystery surrounding these disappearances.
In fact, that is what really gives a distinctive touch to a thriller that in other respects it is more conventional than desirable. We have a good example of them in everything related to the girl who appears suddenly and her mother, but it is more striking that its two protagonists never have a special hook so that the investigation has added interest because they are them. who carry it out.
Lights and shadows of ‘Infiesto’
There it is true that so much Isak Ferriz What Iria del Rio They meet solvency both separately and when the story focuses on the dynamic between the two, but at all times they feel like somewhat generic characters and they also fail to elevate them. Here it is worth noting the secondary appearance of a Luis Zahera capable of elevating a character that by itself might have fallen into mere irrelevance.
Unfortunately, that is something that affects ‘Infiesto’ at all levels and prevents it from becoming that great thriller that its setting and visual work promised. However, the problem here is not so much the usual rigidity of this type of procedural stories as the fact that it seems to be playing too safe and it never stops being as sinister as it could have been.
Yes there are punctual moments in which it is glimpsed what could have been – most of them are in the last 15-20 minutes of footage – but even then Amezcua does not finish putting all the meat on the grill. It is true that there is always something dark in the environment, but that is where it should have gone a step further.
Fortunately, that low ceiling with which the also head of ‘Seventh’ seems to settle is more than enough to achieve something essential in this type of production: arouse the viewer’s curiosity about the case and always offer them at least what is necessary for it to happen. an entertaining time To this we must addthere is a climate of anguish that flies over at all times -there the photograph of Josu Incháustegui It is essential – and that he knows how to take very good advantage of the public’s memory of everything that surrounded the beginning of the pandemic. Of course, it is curious that then the issue of the coronavirus has a much lower weight in the plot.
In short
‘Infiesto’ is one of those films that leaves you with the feeling that It gave for much more but when you finish seeing it you don’t end up thinking that I wish you had seen something else. On the one hand, it offers a harrowing atmosphere and a case that is engaging enough to make your viewing fly by. On the other, his characters do not have the necessary strength and at almost all times it feels like he is going with the handbrake on.
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