STUDIO: Lionsgate
RELEASE DATE: August 19, 2008
STARRING: Various
WRITTEN BY: Various
DIRECTED BY: Various
FEATURES: Making-of Featurettes on All 6 Films

You can keep Masters of Horror, Fear Itself, and 8 Films To Die For. Yes, they all have their moments (The Black Cat and Borderland are totally worth every horror fan's time), but the Spanish-language anthology film series 6 Films To Keep You Awake kicks their butt. The Spaniards are doing something special in the genre nowadays and they're the country to watch in the same way that everyone was looking to Japan and Korea for their scares a few years ago. Like any anthology series, 6 Films To Keep You Awake features a few missed marks, but it also includes two of the best horror movies I've seen this year and that's including theatrical releases. Alex De Iglesia's The Baby's Room and Jaume Balaguero's To Let make whatever you think of the other 4 films irrelevant. On their own, they justify the purchase price and, shockingly, might make the title come true for you. Each of the 6 movies, one at a time...

The Baby's Room

The director of El Crimen Perfecto, Alex De Iglesia, helms the best film in the collection, a gem of modern horror called The Baby's Room. This mini-masterpiece could almost be described as a male version of The Orphanage (although it technically predates that film as it aired on Spanish TV in 2006) in that it's about human fears more than anything else - fear of fatherhood, fear of fidelity, fear of settling down, fear of not living up to familial expectation, and fear of not being able to protect your family. Javier Gutierrez shines as Juan, a man with a new baby and a new house. His sister gives him a monitor, on which he and his wife hear a voice one night. Were they picking up static? Are they paranoid? Then they get a video monitor for the baby and, well, I get chills thinking about it. De Iglesia perfectly amps up the horror scene by scene and, I have to admit, for the first time since The Orphanage, one of my favorite films of 2007, I was honestly scared. Like that amazing film, De Iglesia plays with the idea that maybe Juan is crazy and that there's actually nothing going on. The brilliant script keeps you asking questions, which keeps you a step behind the story and more vulnerable to fear. It ends too abruptly (although with a fantastic "gotcha"), but it's a minor complaint. It's a must-see for horror fans.

To Let

Jaume Balaguero's [Rec] is one of the most infamous foreign DVDs since Ringu and Battle Royale made the rounds on EBay and through circles of foreign-film lovers. [Rec] is being remade as Quarantine in a few weeks and if there's any chance you can see it, do so. It's spectacular. In many ways, To Let feels like a warm-up for the domestic horror of [Rec] although without all the jugular biting. It practically looks like the same apartment complex. A couple who are expecting a baby and looking for someplace new answer an ad for an apartment and find themselves in a circle of Hell. There's nothing really supernatural about To Let - it's closer to something like Texas Chainsaw Massacre - and it proves that Balaguero really does live up to his one-to-watch status. He times this mini-film perfectly with a nice, subtle set-up that then basically explodes into "crazy sh*t" for the next 45 minutes. Screw build-up. Sometimes you just want to go from 0 to 60. The ending is way too abrupt, but what comes before really rocks.

A Christmas Tale

A Christmas Tale is a very, very dark variation on The Goonies or Home Alone, if those movies weren't afraid of the blood that probably ensue from kids searching for treasure or being left to fight robbers. Co-starring the super-awesome Ivana Baquero from Pan's Labyrinth, Xmas Tale is about a group of adventure-seeking and horror movie-loving kids who come across a woman dressed as Santa Claus stuck in a very deep hole in the woods. A few try to rescue her while a pair go to the police, where they happen to see her wanted picture coming out of a fax machine. They decide to do justice on their own and leave the woman in the hole, visiting her every once in a while, bringing her food, keeping her as a "secret pet". Bad, bad idea. Director Paco Plaza (who co-directed the aforementioned and awesome [Rec], although never seems to get the credit that Balaguero does) doesn't have the same visual sense as Jaume or Alex De Iglesia, which makes A Christmas Tale look and feel more like a TV movie than the first two, which have the feel of feature films. Even worse, Tale drags. I didn't want Baby's Room or To Let to end, but I felt every minute of this one. Christmas Tale still has some interesting ideas - the juxtaposition of kids being vicious, violent, and cruel not just to a woman but to SANTA - but doesn't develop enough of them and, sadly, isn't even trying to be scary. This one will keep you interested, but won't keep you awake.

A Real Friend

Who do you think Jeffrey Dahmer's imaginary friends looked like? The clever idea that a horror movie-obsessed little girl would have imaginary friends that looked like Leatherface and Nosferatu is a pretty cool one and someone should play with this material in remake form, but relative newcomer Enrique Urbizu doesn't know what do with it. He's the least-experienced director in 6 Films To Keep You Awake and, while we're all for trying something new, horror doesn't seem to be his thing. A Real Friend tells the story of a hard-working single mother whose teenage daughter stays at home alone most of the day and night. The movie opens with her watching Texas Chainsaw Massacre. In brutally slow detail, we watch her mother come home to find her watching violent stuff, a habit she doesn't support. The problem starts when the poor girl meets a real monster, the kind that she really should not communicate with on any level. Urbizu seems obsessed with details, as if he's making a drama about the plight of a working single mother and the teenage girls being left behind. The tone doesn't fit the material, which drags and drags despite its clever concept.

Blame

Also (and much more accurately) called The Room Upstairs, Blame falls into the second tier of 6 Films To Keep You Awake with A Christmas Tale - good-not-great. The 6 films can easily be divided into the great To Let and The Baby's Room, the good A Christmas Tale and Blame, and, well, the other two. Blame starts when Gloria and her daughter Vicky (another single mother tale...unlike American anthology series, there are some interesting dramatic commonalities in the movies of 6FTKYA) move in to the upstairs room of Gloria's colleague, Ana. Her new landlord happens to perform abortions for a living. One day, Gloria finds out that she's pregnant and Ana tries to convince her that abortion is the best solution. Then things get really weird. The set-up for Blame is interesting and the performances are better than a lot of these films, but, also like a lot of them, it's just never scary. After the one-two punch of To Let and The Baby's Room, I expected to get some chills from the rest of the installments but they're paced much more like thrillers and unlikely to keep anyone awake.

Spectre

A traditional and somewhat effective ghost story, Spectre is a film directed by Mateo Gil, the excellent writer of Abre Los Ojos (a masterpiece that became Vanilla Sky in the remake machine) and The Sea Inside. Gil's so-so entry is about an older gentleman who returns to Spain after being away for decades and not really telling anyone why he fled his hometown. Of course, we see flashbacks to his younger days, when he fell in love with a woman who was branded a witch by the locals. Our hero did not exactly handle the situation well and old demons come back to haunt him when he returns to Spain. You can go home again, but it will be haunted. At least Gil is going for fear and not just a thriller with his installment, but it's still a little too slow for its own good. It's often paced more like a drama than a ghost story and some of the performances don't ring true. Still, even like the worst installments of 6 Films To Keep You Awake, Spectre has some qualities worth recommending. The whole anthology is worth your time. Live up to the title and stay up all night and watch them consecutively. You can sleep when you're dead.