It's a small but wonderful and fascinating pool to fish in; the subgenre of macabre animated movies! You wouldn't give it to them, perhaps, but some the most haunting, unsettling, and downright disturbing movies I have ever seen in my life are (puppet-) animated films, like "Animal Farm", "Any Way the Wind Blows", "The Plague Dogs", "9", "The Nightmare before Christmas", or "Tower". So glad to be able and add a new favorite to the list with this atmospheric, grim, and compelling tale from Spain!
Despite a successful passage at several festivals, I oddly hadn't heard about "The Apostle" around the time of its release. I found out it existed via the beautiful documentary "The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry", about the life and career of Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy, who provided his recognizable and eerie voice to the puppet of the obnoxious Cardinal. And since this was one of Naschy's final projects to work on before his death, I promptly had two good reasons to seek out the film! "The Apostle" came out a few years after Naschy's passing, and it's dedicated to his memory.
"The Apostle" is the delightfully uncanny tale of a little ghost town hidden deep in the woods of Galicia, and slightly astray from the famous pilgrimage path to Santiago de Compostella. The town has been cursed since many decades, and for the handful of inhabitants to remain alive, they must do horrible things to the pilgrims they lure to their town and offer shelter for the night. Ramón, an escaped convict searching for a hidden loot of jewels, suddenly finds himself in the middle of the mystery.
Admittedly there are some massive holes and logical errors in the script, but I easily forgive writer/director Fernando Cortizo for this, because his movie is so incredibly dark and twisted, and absorbing to boot! The highlights include an epically illustrated flashback explaining the origin of the curse and a couple of frightening moments involving ghosts, that certainly shouldn't be seen by young children. The animations are astonishing! A lovely detail is that the puppet-characters are designed after the actors/actresses that provide them with voices, and in the case of Paul Naschy, Geraldine Chapman, and Xosé Manuel Olveira this is job well done, for sure.
Despite a successful passage at several festivals, I oddly hadn't heard about "The Apostle" around the time of its release. I found out it existed via the beautiful documentary "The Man Who Saw Frankenstein Cry", about the life and career of Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy, who provided his recognizable and eerie voice to the puppet of the obnoxious Cardinal. And since this was one of Naschy's final projects to work on before his death, I promptly had two good reasons to seek out the film! "The Apostle" came out a few years after Naschy's passing, and it's dedicated to his memory.
"The Apostle" is the delightfully uncanny tale of a little ghost town hidden deep in the woods of Galicia, and slightly astray from the famous pilgrimage path to Santiago de Compostella. The town has been cursed since many decades, and for the handful of inhabitants to remain alive, they must do horrible things to the pilgrims they lure to their town and offer shelter for the night. Ramón, an escaped convict searching for a hidden loot of jewels, suddenly finds himself in the middle of the mystery.
Admittedly there are some massive holes and logical errors in the script, but I easily forgive writer/director Fernando Cortizo for this, because his movie is so incredibly dark and twisted, and absorbing to boot! The highlights include an epically illustrated flashback explaining the origin of the curse and a couple of frightening moments involving ghosts, that certainly shouldn't be seen by young children. The animations are astonishing! A lovely detail is that the puppet-characters are designed after the actors/actresses that provide them with voices, and in the case of Paul Naschy, Geraldine Chapman, and Xosé Manuel Olveira this is job well done, for sure.