I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Foreign Films That Don't Completely Suck

No-Do aka The Beckoning aka The Haunting (2009) Spain

Note: On 8/14 I got a cheap DVD in a package that was supposedly a Fangoria Frightfest movie called 'The Haunting'. Of course since there are dozens of those, it didn't really mean anything to me until I found out it contained the No-Do and I remembered (surprise, surprise) seeing that movie.

Sure enough, here it is - sheesh. See, No-Do is short for Noticiarios y Documentales, which were news reels shown before movies in Spain to control the news to be just as then-dictator Francisco Franco wanted them. In other words, they were basically watching Fox News. They were shown from the 40's clear through 1981 - long after his dictatorship ended as well as his life. Darn it, and I had a few jokes to tell - screw it, I'm gonna show it anyway...

If you don't remember this, you are up past your bedtime and you'd better hurry off before you get a paddlin'.

It's hard to review a movie that has a ton of names associated with it. Try to find 'The Haunting'  - there are TONS of 'em. A quicker way to find it is to use the original title No-Do. This effort at Spanish horror was a little better than most, partly because they really tried for a different type of plot and a little more detail than just 'somebody died here so it's haunted now' kind of movie. But it falls short for the same reason - way too much detail and it gets mucked up and mish-mashed together into something that gets hard to follow. But it doesn't suck.

Francesca is a new mother and a pediatrician herself, married to another physician, Pedro. She beings to suffer from postpartum depression and it is suggested she take a kind of medical leave out in the country, where she can have a little quiet and enjoy bonding with her new son. 

She can't help but be obsessed with the thought of possibly losing her son to SIDS, having lost another child ten years earlier, and despite the nice quiet of the country living in an old Catholic boarding house, is still deep in depression. She begins to hear things, then to see things. Pedro, of course being the movie-type husband believes nothing she tells him. He finally gets scared enough of her mental state that he takes their son and goes to stay with his parents, leaving her and her daughter Rosa alone in the house (nice guy).

She keeps hearing chanting, praying, and seeing little girls prancing around the house. Her daughter completely believes her and encourages her to find help from a Father Miguel, who is himself a psychiatrist, charged by the church to investigate and debunk miracles and miracle workers. He's pretty burned out though, after miracles seemingly performed by a 'whore' are discounted because the Church 'cannot have whores for saints' and he is ordered to keep his mouth shut, even when after her death supposedly her 'stigmata' continued to bleed for days. Aaaaand this is where it starts to get mucked up. 

Apparently there is a team of the 'ghost busters' (sorry, couldn't resist) who happened to also investigate 'miracles' happening at the house Francesca is now living in. The problem with those were the ones the little girls were performing miracles on, instead of getting better, got sicker and died (you think they would have figured that out for themselves - oh well). 

Something awful happened after that, but no one will tell Father Miguel anything and threaten him with excommunication if he doesn't keep out of it. Nice. While she pleads her case to him anyway, her daughter Rosa tells the Priest 'Help her.' After that, he immediately agrees to come to the house.

Remember the No-Do films? Seems there was not only control from the still-dead Francisco Franco, there was also a special crew working only for the Church. Some guy created a special type of film that catches, uh, otherworldly things on it. By viewing the films they make, you're supposed to be able to tell whether the otherworldly things happening in the films are actually miraculous energies or, I guess, demon influences. I dunno, I started getting lost at this point.

The boarding school girls were found to be the bad kind, and the house needed to be 'cleansed'. In this movie, that meant a martyr sacrifice. Okay. So the Church kills the little girls. Duh. You're not a martyr unless you choose to be one and these little girls definitely did not. But the whole thing was covered up, the films locked up, and all involved again threatened with excommunication if they didn't keep their mouths shut.

Sigh. How do I get faster to the end of this? Father Miguel decides screw it, he grabs the film of the little girls (and finds the one about his miraculous 'whore' which he takes also) and they see on the film that the girls were definitely surrounded by something... bad. 

And they also filmed (for some God-awful reason) the attempt to 'cleanse' the place by slaughtering the girls. Believe me, I'm keeping this as simple as I can and some parts are getting left out, but it would be three times as long. 

While he's at it, he watches the film about his 'whore' and finds that the Church agreed that she must have been genuine and it was Father Miguel's fault that this 'mistake' was made (they tortured her until she killed herself) and never to speak of it again. Sigh.

Our 'twist' to this prolonged tale is that the daughter who has been helping Francesca is actually the dead child she lost but only she (and apparently Father Miguel) can see her. So everybody goes up to the attic, where the 'ghosts' are in full form, but again Pedro sees nothing. Father Miguel realizes a REAL martyr is needed. 

He tells the two to get out of the house as he kills himself in a way (wait, isn't suicide against... never mind again) that literally blows the house up in flames and the couple make it out just in time. A light is shown to shoot from the top of the house into the sky. Okay.

The end of the movie shows another No-Do movie with the spin version of events back then - the Church slaps the hands of the little girls and tells them to behave then leaves. 'What imaginations!' says the narrator. Duh. Okay, so it wasn't great and it got confusing and too full of supposed Church 'facts' but it was a bit more intelligent than your usual haunted house story. And now it is over.