This Geek In Netflix – Shiver

I knew if I watched enough Netflix horror movies, I’d find one that didn’t make me want to slowly bleed out in a clawfoot bathtub.

“Shiver” (Spanish title: Eskalofrio) premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in 2008 and was produced by the same people who brought us “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Orphanage”.

(Do you remember “The Orphanage”?  I do– that damn movie prevented me from getting a full night’s sleep for a several months.)

“Shiver” also shares the same production designer as “Pan’s Laybrinth”, Pilar Revuelta, which means this movie is gorgeous in that overcast and rainy sort of way. The camera work really compliments her designs, making me realize the amazing amount of crap I’ve watched in the last few weeks.

He must’ve watched “The Orphanage” before bed.  Bad move, kiddo.

This wonderful foreign horror film tells the story of Santiago, a teenager with what the translator called “photophobia” but is actually a bit more severe than just light-sensitivity.  Santiago, “Santi” for short, experiences pain and blisters when exposed to the sunlight, enough so that the doctor warns that he may have to undergo skin transplants if his condition worsens.

And he is slowly growing fangs.  

Hey, hey, don’t worry– this isn’t (exactly) a vampire movie.  No sparkling here.

With encouragement from both the doctor and her son, Santi’s mother decides to move to a small village mostly hidden from sunlight in a deep tree-filled valley in northern Spain.

When they arrive to their new home just outside of the village, Santi and his mother meet their landlord, Dimas, who gives them a tour of the house before they settle in for the night.

A man walks into a store with a sheep and says to the store-keeper…

Of course, that night a sheep is slaughtered by some unseen beast and the angry one-eyed shepherd (because every movie needs an angry one-eyed shepherd) rushes out with his gun and fires into the forest.

The next day, while Santi experiences his first day at his new school, his mother gets to witness aforementioned angry one-eyed shepherd tote his newest gutted sheep carcass into the town’s grocery store and complain that this is the third slaughtered ewe and he’s taking manners into his own angry one-eyed shepherd hands.

After school, one of Santi’s newly acquired friends, Tito, encounters the same unseen(ish) beast from the previous night and tells everyone at school about it the following day.  Santi, Tito, and the class hotshot, Jonas, decide to go into the woods and hunt down the beast.

FATALITY

Things happen, Jonas ends up having his blood sucked out of his neck and dies.  (Not a vampire movie, I repeat, not a vampire movie.  Really.)

Jonas’s death causes the introduction of Inspector Cifuentes, the father of Santi’s potential love interest and classmate, Angela.  After interrogating Santi and taking a spit swab, the inspector determines that Santi is not the murderer.  Unfortunately for Santi, the village people (not the band) continue to believe that he killed Jonas.

Another murder with Santi nearby later, the villagers start to get aggressive.  However, at this murder, Santi sees the thus-far-unseen beast and figures out what it is– except no one will believe him.  With the adults and police being no help, Santi decides that he’s going to have to go into the woods and gather evidence himself.

Better at keeping the camera steady than those damn Blair Witch kids.

Reading the above, this movie sounds a bit more like a detective flick than a horror flick.  Kid has to prove his innocence while avoiding stoning by suspicious townfolk.

But it doesn’t feel like that upon viewing.  It felt like, to me, what would have happened if Goonies went horribly, horribly wrong.  And was in Spanish.  (Don’t give me any of that “Mouth speaks Spanish” crap either, because all of them would need to speak Spanish, not just Mouth.)

I really enjoyed it.  It wasn’t as good as “The Orphanage” (I am easily going to be able to sleep tonight), but it is definitely the best horror movie I have reviewed thus far.  It’s more than worth queuing up on Netflix Instant– just in time for Halloween.