Afterparty

It's no wonder that screenwriter Miguel Larraya cites 'Saw' and 'Thesis' as two of his favourite horror films. The former gives him the setting of the claustrophobic space – in this case, a hermetically-sealed labyrinthine villa – and a game of cat and mouse with unlikely surprises at every turn. From the latter, he takes the spirit of the condemnation of the use and abuse of images nowadays, the indifference to violence that it creates in adolescents and teenagers, the lack of distinction between private and public, blah, blah, blah. That the protagonist is a TV actor, an idol of the unscrupulous masses, could in itself serve as an ironic statement about the capricious world of cathode celebrity in Spain and its effects on the teenage population. But 'Afterparty' is so clumsy in its scripted twists and turns, the acting so amateurish and the killings so obvious that the film doesn't even come close to those it was modelled after. (In Spanish)