Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: F. Javier Gutierrez
Starring: Victor Clavijo, Ruth Diaz, Manuel Moron, Luis Callejo
After being lured to Hollywood to helm the unremarkable legacy horror
sequel
Rings, writer/director F. Javier Gutiérrez is back on Spanish soil,
the sun-baked soil of Andalusia to be precise, for his third feature,
The Wait. It's a film of two halves, the first a Coen Bros-esque thriller about
a good man damned by bad decisions, the second an EC Comics style
supernatural thriller in which the same man is haunted for his
misdeeds.
In the early 1970s, Eladio (Victor Clavijo) is hired by the
wealthy Don Francisco (Pedro Casablanc) to look after the hunting
grounds on the Don's sprawling ranch. Alll goes well, but Eladio is
clearly underpaid, with his wife Marcia (Ruth Diaz) complaining
that he can't provide a decent meal for their 13-year-old son Floren (Moisés Ruiz).
When Francisco's sleazy associate Don Carlos (Manuel Morón)
suggests that the ranch increase its shooting posts from 10 to 13,
Eladio initially refuses to go along with the idea, explaining to Carlos
how adding three more posts would greatly increase the chance of a
hunter getting caught in a crossfire. Eladio even rejects Carlos's offer
of a considerable sum of money to keep it between themselves, but when
Carlos pays a visit to Marcia, Eladio is guilt-tripped into going along
with the dangerous plan.
Eladio's fears prove well founded. Someone is indeed caught in the
crossfire, but not just anyone – Eladio's own son, killed immediately
when a stray bullet goes straight through his eye-socket. Things get
worse when no longer able to live with herself, Marcia takes her own
life. This leads Eladio to retreat into alcohol, moping around his
property until in a drunken stupor he decides to commit an act of
violence.
At this point the stage is set for a potentially great sweaty blend of
the western and noir genres. But the film switches gears, introducing a
supernatural element as some sort of malevolent force seems to be
haunting Eladio. His dog turns aggressive, previously lost family items
mysteriously reappear, and Eladio is cursed with vivid nightmares. One
of these dreams features what might be the best creature transformation
effects since An American Werewolf in London, but it's wildly out of place in an otherwise stoic film.
The biggest problem The Wait faces is that its
protagonist is so broken by the point that he begins to be menaced by
paranormal forces that such hauntings are a little redundant. Eladio has
experienced the worst thing that could possibly happen to a husband and
father, so there's really nowhere deeper for him to sink. Such a
character might have made for a successful anti-hero in the revenge
thriller that The Wait initially teases, but the
protagonist of a horror movie needs to have something to lose.
On a technical level The Wait is an impressive
undertaking all round. The acting, especially by Clavijo, is beguiling,
and Gutiérrez and cinematographer Miguel A. Mora make great use
of the lonely expanse of the Andalusian countryside to cement their
protagonist's emotional and physical isolation. But it's mostly hitting
beats we've seen before in countless segments of horror anthologies, and
its final reveal is doled out in clunky fashion with a character
explaining the plot to Eladio (and the audience). By the final act of
The Wait your patience may prove ironically tested.
