'Big Bad Wolf': Torture porn in a laughable 'thriller' about beheaded girls

To begin with, a truism that may not be too much to remember: despite the brilliant year 2022 for our cinema, full of quality, novelties and interest, horrible Spanish films continue to be made and will continue to be made.

Like in any other country.

It is inevitable, and it is good that it is so so that we know how to appreciate the merit of composing some of the formidable titles that were released last season, and the confluence of so many distinguished and notable works in a single course.

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The previous paragraph is relevant because the person who writes this has been facing poor Spanish films for three consecutive weeks with a certain aura of solemnity, either because of the subject matter or, as in this one, because of the names that lead the cast.

And although the disappointment is great, the conclusion is clear and almost simple: making good movies is very difficult.

Big Bad Wolf,

a co-production between Spain (80% of the financing) and Uruguay, directed by the Uruguayan Gustavo Hernández Ibáñez, is a new version of the 2013 Israeli film

It is possible that the business reasons that have led to the reworking of a title that passed through our country without penalty or glory lie in the fact that Quentin Tarantino declared in his day that that black comedy was the best work he had seen that year.

But the only thing that shows his singular exaggeration is that the worst that can happen to some renowned authors, like the director of sensations like

is that they come out as pedestrian emulators as those that critics and viewers had to put up with. for too many years.

Hernández 's

is incomparable from the prologue, filmed by Israelis Aharon Keshales and Navit Papushado with symbolic elegance and mimicked by Hernández with bland black-and-white bombast.

The second sequence causes alarm bells to go off, especially to those who, guided by the Spanish poster, believe that they are facing a dark

of violence and terror: in the middle of beating a suspect, the savage policeman whose interrogation goes too far, his cell phone rings and it's his mother to see how he puts on the new dishwasher at home.

Is this a comedy or what?

She pretends to be.

Tarantinian perhaps;

with vulgar dialogues such as the first meeting between the characters of Javier Gutiérrez and Juana Acosta, and laughable sequences that seem taken from a bad Guy Ritchie movie from two decades ago, such as the inebriated slapping contest that serves to discover the roles of Antonio Dechent. and Adriana Ugarte.

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As its title already indicates, the story is about crimes and pedophilia;

of a timid music teacher accused of beheading girls;

of the (here) civil guards who persecute him, and of a family with a dark past that intends to take revenge on the suspect.

But there is never a joint idea in the tone (something that at least the Israeli did have).

Each sequence, comedy or violence, goes its own way;

the soundtrack and the songs that play are so stereotyped that they seem like a parody, and the violence is so explicit and gratuitous that more than a black comedy it ends up being quality

.

In the interpretive field, Ugarte does not succeed in his suicidal composition role.

Rubén Ochandiano and Dechent come out alive: the first with his disturbing profile and vocal tone;

the second with a trace of humanity and shamelessness.

And Gutiérrez has nothing to do with such a defective product.

big bad wolf

Address:

Gustavo Hernández Ibáñez.

Cast:

Javier Gutiérrez, Adriana Ugarte, Rubén Ochandiano, Juana Acosta, Antonio Dechent. 

Genre

:

Spain, 2023.

Duration:

105 minutes.

Premiere: January 27.

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