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Two siblings,
Pablo and Malena, are in Argentina
since they've decided to pull the plug on their
father who's on his deathbed. Since Pablo barely
knows anything about his father, Malena agrees
to come on a trip with him to the place where
they grew up. At first it seems like a nice road
trip, but when they find an old diary about
murders committed 20 years ago, everything changes.
How can you save someone that's all ready dead?
Wow, it feels like forever since the first time
I heard about this movie. It was supposed to be
released theatrically in Spain last year but then
it was postponed and postponed again and now
it rests on an undetermined 2009 date for the
Spanish theatrical release. Luckily the movie
was co-produced by a Swedish company so the movie
just hit DVD in Scandinavia so I immediately ran
to the video store and grabbed myself a copy. Was
it worth the wait? Well, to be honest with you,
I think this could become a big box-office hit
in Spain if it is ever released there but it
kind of felt like The Orphanage's long-lost
sibling (no pun intended).
Aparecidos, or The Appeared as it's called in
English, is a ghost story where Pablo and Malena,
two siblings, travel to Argentina (from Barcelona)
so that they can pull the plug on their dying
father. However, they naturally run into trouble
when they find an old journal telling them when
and where a family of three was brutally murdered
20 years ago. To make things worse, it seems as
if these events repeat themselves every night.
Will Pablo and Malena be able to save the family
so that they can finally find peace, or will
the appeared get to them as well? It's a nice
story but not a very scary one and that's really
what this movie lacked; horror and suspense.
Instead of trying to scare its audience it tries
to draw the audience in with an emotional story,
a story that doesn't always work. In fact, the
entire movie felt rather forced for some reason.
The emotions never felt real and why would anyone
even try to save the spirits of ghosts that they
don't know in the first place? Especially if it
gets them into trouble as well. It just wasn't
very believable. The characters kept doing these
stupid things that would annoy the hell out of
you. Also, due to the fact that it focuses more
on the drama than the horror-aspect, the movie
has a tendency to drag at times and become a
little bit tedious.
However, you have to keep in mind that even though
I really enjoyed The Orphanage, I thought that
it was way too slow and didn't find it very
scary at all. It was a great movie but greatly
over-hyped as well in my opinion. I'm sure that
many of you will just love Aparecidos but I never
could get into it. It's a good movie but I'm
just going to leave it at that, it's not great,
it has some serious issues, it's overambitious
and I don't think that I will be revisiting
it anytime soon.
Not much here.
Once again it tried to be more than it was. The
soundtrack was more powerful than the movie itself
but even so I didn't care much for it.
Aparecidos is a good movie but not a movie for
everyone. It's a very slow burner and I felt that
it was too ambitious for its own good, it wanted
to be more than it actually was. If you're
looking for a decent ghost story you may want
to give this one a spin but don't expect another
Spanish horror hit.
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