Mother Estela (Celeste Gerez) and teenage daughter Irina (Camila Vaccarini) have been living with Estela’s new partner, Bernardo (Luis Machín), for a while now, but there are still a lot of teething problems. Firstly, there’s the usual teenage daughter-mother fights causing friction, then there’s the fact that Irina is grieving the death of her father. Estela is not as sad, given the man used to abuse her, but Irina refuses to hear anything negative about her deceased dad. Irina’s Grandmother doesn’t help matters either and has been insidiously working her way into her granddaughter’s affections, wedging herself in the middle and causing them to drift further from one another. Finally, there’s the small matter of the residence being a funeral home. That might not sound like such a big problem, a little creepy, sure, but otherwise a house is a house. Except in this house, the dead come back at night to haunt the property and those that dwell in it.
We’ve all seen the films where a family moves into a house and discover something creepy lurking within the walls. These people either get in an exorcist, or flee the scene. In Funeral Home, it’s just an everyday occurrence, the family going about their business as if sharing their home with spirits was totally normal. It’s a quirky idea and one that is enforced from the opening, the camera stalking through the house in the dead of night pausing to take note of various signs that remind those living, of the rules for interacting – or more accurately avoiding – those that have passed on. The direction also aids the story as what teenage girl outside of Lydia in Beetlejuice would want to share their home with ghosts. It also helps to mask the true story of what is happening from the three leads as a vengeful and hateful spirit has snuck in and starts delighting in terrifying the women, causing tensions all around.
Set mainly at night, director Mauro Iván Ojeda injects maximum tension and suspense into the film. The camera regularly repeats its opening roam around the house, putting the viewer constantly on edge and waiting for something to pop out and startle them. Having a night time setting also allows everything to be dark and Ojeda uses only minimal lighting, letting creepy shadows cast and fall, sending the imagination into overdrive. He also includes some eerie flashing lights, which given the lack of light elsewhere, are almost more frightening than the pitch black.
Funeral Home is also very quiet. This is obvious in the case of the night scene, the family all tucked up in bed, but it is followed through into the daytime. There’s little dialogue throughout the film. This retains that sinister edge built up during the night scenes, but also serves to highlight just how fractured this family unit is. The reason for so little dialogue is that the characters do not interact with one another as they should. Each is weighed down with the burden of a thousand things that they want to say and yet for various reasons, nothing is ever spoken. To keep things going audibly, we are instead treated to a fantastic otherworldly score from Jeremías Smith. It’s a string heavy ensemble that warps our depth perception of sound and has an unsettling ability to sound like people talking, whispering etc. It’s creepy, but very effective at generating mood and atmosphere; it works beautifully when played alongside the muted cast.
As effective and haunting as the likes of The Haunting of Hill House, Funeral Home marks an exciting debut from Mauro Iván Ojeda. If this is the first thing up his sleeve, we look forward to being tormented by his future projects.
Funeral Home was reviewed at Arrow Video Frightfest Halloween.
Funeral Home
Summary
Sit back, turn the lights off, and witness the debut of a very exciting new voice.
