Review of Hierro (2009) by Claire A — 17 Jun 2010

The Spanish are making the boldest genre movies in the world right now, and this latest entry - "from the producers of "Pan's Labyrinth" and "The Orphanage"", as the posters will doubtless have it - is at least boldly derivative.

Ibanez's feature debut, written by Javier Gullon, begins as "Flightplan" al mar, then tosses in elements of Hideo Nakata's "Dark Water", de Palma-like voyeurism (Brian, not Rossy), several recent high-profile cases involving missing children, and finally comes to resemble a trash remake of "L'Avventura".

Like this week's "Wild Grass", it seems reluctant to betray exactly what kind of a story it's telling until late on, although here that feels less a deliberate tactic than a side effect of magpie filmmakers hungrily casting around for other people's ideas.

.. In the very watchable Anaya - whose nubile babysitter was by far the sexiest thing about Julio Medem's "Sex and Lucia", her eyes dark pools into which this correspondent would happily dive - Ibanez has a willing accomplice, and elsewhere, the money's all up on screen: in cinematographer Alejandro Martinez's adept lensing of the craggy, alien landscape the heroine finds herself in, and in the cerulean blues in which the costume department have conspired to dress Anaya.

Yet the best features in this current Iberian renaissance ("[REC]", "Timecrimes", "Fermat's Room") reined themselves in, only belatedly spiralling outwards; "Hierro" is baroque from the get-go, a super slo-mo car crash set to a grandiose score by composer Zacarias M.

de la Riva (whose very name is OTT). The work of a director plunging feet first in at the deep end, it has a visual confidence that bodes well for Ibanez's future projects - but next time round, he'd do well to accommodate the slow drip of terror, rather than turning all the taps on full blast.