Películas para no dormir: Cuento de Navidad [6 Films to Keep You Awake: A Christmas Tale] (2005)

You'll generally only see this marketed in the US under the title, "A Christmas Tale", which seems be an accurate translation, with the caveat "Cuento de Navidad" is also how "A Christmas Carol" is often translated into Spanish. The other part of the full title, "Películas para no dormir," is the series it's from, consisting of six Spanish TV horror movies originally airing in 2005. That's... actually the short version: if I'm understanding right, they were sort of a revival for a television series called "Historias para no dormir" which was produced sporadically from the late 60s to early 80s, but let's just focus on what's at hand. I don't believe any of the other five films in the 2005 series were set at Christmas, though I'm tempted to watch to find out.

Because "A Christmas Tale" (or whatever you want to call it) is absolutely phenomenal. There's no "graded on a curve" or "good for a TV movie" caveat at the end of that: this is a fantastic horror flick that takes some unexpected turns and delivers a creepy, satisfying finale. It feels ahead of its time, too: set in the 80s with a cast of characters reminiscent of the Goonies, this beats Stranger Things to the punch by more than a decade.

If that's enough to pique your interest, I encourage you to stop reading now and track this down. You know what? Screw encourage: I'm begging you to stop reading this review. Assuming you enjoy horror, you don't want this spoiled, believe me.

If you don't enjoy horror and/or just want a reminder, well... keep reading.

The movie kicks off with the end of a retro zombie movie, complete with the sort of cheesy effects, bad writing, and low quality you'd expect from a late-night creature-feature recorded and replayed on VHS in the mid 80s. The lore concerning these movie zombies is ridiculous and arbitrary - you need to stab them through the left eye and confirm black goo oozes out before you know they're dead. The hero explaining this looks ridiculous. It's great.

That's before the opening credits kick off the movie proper, which opens in 1985 and quickly introduces us to a group of five kids on Christmas break. Again, these are essentially the Goonies, or any other group of 80s kid protagonists: weird outcasts who love genre movies and ride bikes everywhere. Excluding characters in the aforementioned zombie movie (which we'll cut back to a few times), these are five of the six characters whose faces will appear on camera. The sixth is a woman dressed in a Santa outfit the kids find trapped in a hole. There are a handful of other minor adult characters, but the movie always keeps their faces out of frame one way or another.

The woman in the hole, Rebecca (actress Maru Valdivielso giving a hell of a performance), is a bank robber who recently escaped with a large sum of money. When the kids realize who she is, they decide to force her to tell them where the fortune is hidden. Actually, I should specify not all the kids are onboard with this idea. Moni (Ivana Baquero), the only girl in the group, goes along with this due to peer pressure but would rather just go the police. She's also not onboard with the plan to starve the information out of Rebecca. Moni tries going around the group's back to feed Rebecca, but she's thwarted.

I should note the boys are not uniformly cruel. Koldo (Christian Casas) has a crush on Moni and generally takes her side, while Tito (Pau Poch) mostly goes along with the crowd. It's mainly Peti and Eugenio (Roger Babià and Daniel Casadellà) whose greed dictates the direction of the group. They're also the two who have seen that zombie movie, which inspires them to perform a "Voodoo ritual" described in the film near the hole Rebecca's in, just to see what will happen.

Eventually they break her spirit and get the money in exchange for promising to let her go. But Peti and Eugenio don't want to stick to the deal: they point out it would be very dangerous to free her, even in her current state, which includes a broken leg and malnutrition. By the time the group circles back to the hole, they find her apparently dead from exposure. They get a cop, hoping to get a reward on top of the stolen money, but when they bring him to the hole they find it empty.

The kids aren't sure if she escaped somehow (Moni did finally drop some food down, so it's not impossible she regained her strength), or if the ritual from the zombie movie reanimated her. The ambiguity of this hangs over the next section. When she comes after them, she looks like a zombie to the kids, but the audience watching can see how the injuries she sustained earlier would mirror the appearance of a movie monster.

Regardless of her status, she wants revenge and grabs an axe. The kids can't go to the police (they've been committing an awful lot of crimes, after all), so they lead her to an abandoned amusement park. After an extensive series of cat-and-mouse games, Tito channels his love of The Karate Kid into a kick, which results in her falling down a broken slide and impaling her head on an exposed rebar. This conveniently lines up with her left eye, though only normal blood flows from the wound, leaving the kids confused. They drag her back to the hole, dump her in, and swear an oath to never speak of this to anyone.

Cut to more of that zombie movie, now explaining more lore. Turns out, if you perform the ritual on a living body, when they die they're not susceptible to the zombies' normal weaknesses as it seeks revenge. The next day, Moni tries to contact her friends, but no one responds via walkie-talkie. She goes to the hole and looks down. Then she turns around and sees Rebecca, now clearly undead. Rebecca kneels in front of her and repeats a version of the oath the kids took never to reveal what happened. She leaves Moni alive, albeit traumatized. We're never shown what's in the hole, but the implication is pretty clear.

The movie is using the holidays in several ways. The most simplistic is to explain the kids being out of school. This is of course also playing off several horror traditions. First, there's the Christmas ghost story aspect, which this of course ties back to. On top of that, a Santa-suited killer wielding an axe is practically a cliche, most famous from Silent Night, Deadly Night and dating back at least to the EC Comics of the 1950s that inspired the Tales from the Crypt episode, "All Through the House" (as well as the segment of the same name from the 1970s movie). I believe this is the first time I've seen this iconography used for a female character, however, a change that makes her more sympathetic as we see her effectively tortured by a group of boys indifferent to her pain. Gender and misogyny form a significant part of the subtext of both the movie itself and the film within a film, where a macho hero is shown talking down to a woman mainly present as eye-candy. We see some of the boys using this media as a model for their behavior, leading them to look down on Moni and dehumanize Rebecca.

That in turn leads us to the movie's other main use of Christmas: as nostalgia for the audience. In that regard, both the holidays and the 1980s fill this niche, as both are periods remembered fondly. Perhaps too fondly, in the case of the 80s. The movie deconstructs our idealized memories of childhood and the past, reminding us that the past wasn't as good and kids aren't as innocent as we'd like to remember. Excluding Moni, the kids in this movie are cruel. As for the 80s, they were a period of sexism and greed.

In fact, greed may be why the movie's Spanish title evokes A Christmas Carol, assuming that was the intent ("Cuento de Navidad" is one of the common translations; "Leyenda de Navidad" is also used). However it's notable the children's greed resembles that of Scrooge, though it's equally notable they don't receive the same sort of redemption. This is a Christmas tale, but it's not a cheerful one.

I find the themes fascinating, but as usual it's the experience of watching that won me over. Director Paco Plaza blends humor and horror together brilliantly, and I really can't say enough good things about Maru Valdivielso, who conveys despair and pain, building our sympathy to the point we sympathize with her even as she transforms into a child-hunting monster. The movie requires her to split the difference between axe-wielding maniac and literal zombie, and she sells the ambiguity perfectly.

It's a great movie, made all the more impressive by the fact it was produced for television. This is absolutely worth tracking down, so long as the genre and subject matter aren't a deal-breaker for you.