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Dec 07, 2014Nursebob rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
César (heartthrob Luis Tosar) is the handsome soft-spoken concierge at a chic Barcelona apartment building. He is also an ice cold sociopath completely lacking any human empathy whatsoever. Constantly dogged by suicidal thoughts, César’s only respite comes from playing malicious pranks on the tenants; deriving some degree of mirthless satisfaction by making others miserable. He meets his greatest challenge however in Clara, the perpetually optimistic young woman upstairs, and no matter what he does—-seeding her apartment with cockroach eggs, injecting lye into her face cream, hiding under her bed with chloroform in hand waiting for her to fall asleep—-she remains oblivious to the monster behind his false smile. The only witnesses to his wicked activities are the little girl across the hall whose juvenile attempts at blackmail eventually backfire; and his institutionalized mother who, paralyzed and mute following a stroke, can only weep as he whispers every sordid detail of his plan to destroy Clara’s life. But when Clara’s boyfriend discovers a few incriminating clues, César’s tenuous hold on sanity begins to crumble and his mean-spirited games suddenly turn deadly… Shot almost entirely within the confines of an aging condo complex, Jaume Balagueró’s sadistic urban nightmare plays on many different levels: as a straight-up thriller it contains passages of almost unbearable tension as Balagueró slowly raises the stakes; as a psychological horror film its casual cruelty is both repellent and morbidly fascinating; and as the blackest of comedies its diabolically twisted ending left me chuckling more out of disbelief than amusement. A perfectly choreographed assault on modern insecurities which puts a sinister spin on that last bastion of safety—-our homes (and beds). Sweet dreams!