Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad is set in a small Spanish town during Christmas 1985. Five young friends named Koldo (Christian Casas), Peti (Roge Babia), Tito (Paul Poch), Eugenio (Daniel Casadellà) & Moni (Ivana Baquero) find a woman dressed as Santa Claus stuck in a large hole in the local woods they play in, they quickly discover that her name is Rebeca (Maru Valdivielso) & she is wanted by the police for a bank robbery. The greedy little git's decide to keep her trapped down the hole until she tells them what she did with the money she stole so they can steel it from her. Straving & badly injured Rebeca seemingly has no choice to tell them...
Known under the title Films to Keep You Awake: The Christmas Tale to English speaking audiences this Spanish production was directed by Paco Plaza & is part of the six film Films to Keep You Awake series of made-for-Spanish telly horror films. The script by Luis Berdejo starts off as a fairly simple thriller with the twelve year old kids keeping Rebeca down a hole in the woods so they can get the money she stole, this aspect of the film is alright but far from brilliant. Then something right out of the very worst 80's horror film happens, two of the kids who like watching horror films bizarrely conduct a Voodoo ritual for no apparent reason they saw in a film they watched called Zombie Invasion which brings Rebeca back from the dead when she dies down the hole. Right, well isn't that quite the most stupid thing you have ever heard? Why on Earth did they reenact the Voodoo ritual? Why did it even work? Then for the last twenty odd minutes Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad becomes a slasher film as a reanimated back from the dead zombie Rebeca stalks the annoying kids with an axe. Unfortunately imagine the very worst teen slasher film from the 80's & then triple it, Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad has no nudity, no deaths, no gore, no blood, no mystery surrounding the stalkers identity & it's as lifeless a twenty minutes of predictable slasher film nonsense as I have ever seen. The film also raises the unpalatable notion that watching horror films causes people to turn bad since the two most evil, sadistic & nasty of the kids are the two that watched the zombie film, talk about alienating your audience! Then there are a few plot holes like how did Rebeca get out of the hole at the end? Why was there a big hole in the woods anyway & why did Rebeca fall down it? Couldn't she have just like walked around it? It wasn't exactly inconspicuous...
Director Plaza does alright but I never got the feeling it was Christmas, there are no decorations or anything like that & apart from Rebeca being dressed in a Santa Claus outfit nothing relates to it being Christmas at all. Plaza also takes the odd decision to not properly show any of the adults faces, the cops & the kids parents are all framed so as to have their heads either obscured by an object or cut off the top of the frame. Strange & there's no real reason for it as far as I could tell. The only bit of gore is when someone's head is impaled on a metal spike. Apart from some really lame stalk 'n' slash moments at the end there's nothing in Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad to indicate that it is even a horror film. There's certainly nothing scary here & there's no sort of atmosphere.
Yechnically the film is alright, apparently shot in Barcelona in Spain. It's reasonably well made & put together. Shot in Spanish the film is subtitled, some of the subtitles don't stay on screen for long though so you will have to be quick. The acting seems OK but as someone who doesn't speak Spanish it's hard to tell.
Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad is another entry in the Films to Keep You Awake series that for me is far more likely to send you to sleep. It really doesn't make any sense, it has lots of holes (besides the one Rebeca falls in) & there's nothing new or original or horrific about it.
Known under the title Films to Keep You Awake: The Christmas Tale to English speaking audiences this Spanish production was directed by Paco Plaza & is part of the six film Films to Keep You Awake series of made-for-Spanish telly horror films. The script by Luis Berdejo starts off as a fairly simple thriller with the twelve year old kids keeping Rebeca down a hole in the woods so they can get the money she stole, this aspect of the film is alright but far from brilliant. Then something right out of the very worst 80's horror film happens, two of the kids who like watching horror films bizarrely conduct a Voodoo ritual for no apparent reason they saw in a film they watched called Zombie Invasion which brings Rebeca back from the dead when she dies down the hole. Right, well isn't that quite the most stupid thing you have ever heard? Why on Earth did they reenact the Voodoo ritual? Why did it even work? Then for the last twenty odd minutes Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad becomes a slasher film as a reanimated back from the dead zombie Rebeca stalks the annoying kids with an axe. Unfortunately imagine the very worst teen slasher film from the 80's & then triple it, Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad has no nudity, no deaths, no gore, no blood, no mystery surrounding the stalkers identity & it's as lifeless a twenty minutes of predictable slasher film nonsense as I have ever seen. The film also raises the unpalatable notion that watching horror films causes people to turn bad since the two most evil, sadistic & nasty of the kids are the two that watched the zombie film, talk about alienating your audience! Then there are a few plot holes like how did Rebeca get out of the hole at the end? Why was there a big hole in the woods anyway & why did Rebeca fall down it? Couldn't she have just like walked around it? It wasn't exactly inconspicuous...
Director Plaza does alright but I never got the feeling it was Christmas, there are no decorations or anything like that & apart from Rebeca being dressed in a Santa Claus outfit nothing relates to it being Christmas at all. Plaza also takes the odd decision to not properly show any of the adults faces, the cops & the kids parents are all framed so as to have their heads either obscured by an object or cut off the top of the frame. Strange & there's no real reason for it as far as I could tell. The only bit of gore is when someone's head is impaled on a metal spike. Apart from some really lame stalk 'n' slash moments at the end there's nothing in Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad to indicate that it is even a horror film. There's certainly nothing scary here & there's no sort of atmosphere.
Yechnically the film is alright, apparently shot in Barcelona in Spain. It's reasonably well made & put together. Shot in Spanish the film is subtitled, some of the subtitles don't stay on screen for long though so you will have to be quick. The acting seems OK but as someone who doesn't speak Spanish it's hard to tell.
Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad is another entry in the Films to Keep You Awake series that for me is far more likely to send you to sleep. It really doesn't make any sense, it has lots of holes (besides the one Rebeca falls in) & there's nothing new or original or horrific about it.