The best Spanish horror movies to be scared

The great ovation during the final credits in the Sitges Festival 2022 screening of ‘Cerdita’ confirmed the title as one of the sensations of the year. And it is that its argument, the dark story of a young woman from the village who has in her hand the salvation of the girls who make her life impossible, takes us to a scorching summer in Extremadura in which black Spain is resurrected with bloody consequences. A trip to neighboring corners with extraordinary cinematographic modes, black irony and firewood enough to start topping these lists.

Review of ‘Little Pig’ (****)

Among the Spanish movies on Netflix you can find this fusion between ‘Babadook’ and ‘The Witch’ made by the Catalan David Casademunt, where terror comes from the fantastic and this from the psychological depths of its protagonists, an isolated family in the wilderness. The end of ‘El páramo’ is just as suggestive and enigmatic, open to a realistic interpretation and another much more terrifying one to face with the shotgun.

Every ghost story is, in a way, a story of grief and loss, of trauma and injustice, of absences that refuse to go away. This is what happens in ‘Voces’, one of the best psychological horror movies on Netflix, by Ángel Gómez Hernández. It all begins when a family arrives at the well-known “house of voices” but, at the beginning, when little Eric says that there are sounds that try to communicate with them, they will believe that it is a product of their imagination. Not for much longer.

Nostalgia, terror and fantasy come together in this story, one of the best horror movies on Disney+ and the debut of Sergio G. Sánchez. Produced by Juan Antonio Bayona, ‘The Secret of Marrowbone’ mixes period cinema (it’s the 60s) with fantasy and violence in an unforgettable summer for these four brothers who want at all costs to avoid being separated after the death of their mother, and even more so that they discover their terrible secret.

Paco Plaza says when talking about his favorite scenes when filming that the most difficult to film in ‘Verónica’ was “the Ouija board sequence with the children at the end.” There was not only a climax with spirits (hopefully fictional) but also a complicated shoot with children. Those are the key elements of a film that recovers the spirit of the best films of the 80s of the genre, such as ‘Poltergeist’, to introduce them into Spanish domestic life, as the nun schools, Veronica’s house and those translucent crystals with infinite possibilities for terror. Thus, with elements known to any horror fan (possessions, Ouija boards, real cases), Plaza builds a story that will make your hair stand on end. By the way, it’s going to scare you even more when you find out that ‘Veronica’ is a horror movie based on real events.

Here there are no ghosts, possessions or other paranormal phenomena, but although it is rather one of the best thrillers in Spanish cinema, it seems as terrifying (or more) than its companions on this list. In fact, the real, the plausible, is here much more disturbing than the fantastic.. Luis Tosar plays a man obsessed with Marta Etura, against whom he will let the full weight of her cruelty fall. Without a doubt, one of Luis Tosar’s best characters.

In this story halfway between Madrid and London, children become the targets of those ‘intruders’ referred to in the title. The director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, that with ’28 weeks later’ he achieved one of the few horror sequels (almost) as good as the original, embarks on the interior of terror with a tense story and, above all, disturbing reflections. Not everything in terror is bouncing in the chair.

The ancestral fear of the human being resides in the dark. So what’s more terrifying than gradually losing your sight until you’re in the shadows? Guillem Morales made us experience this situation through the lost gaze of Belén Rueda, who suffers from a degenerative disease that will leave her blind. To make matters worse, there is a man who stalks her taking advantage of her situationand their chases are by far the most tense and terrifying part of this ‘giallo’-esque film.

Before directing the remake of ‘Al interior’, the filmmaker Miguel Ángel Vivas surprised with this simple and forceful horror film with Fernando Cayo and Manuela Vellés. The scenario is more than well known in the genre: thieves break into a house far from prying ears and sow panic and violence among the victims. Vivas’s pulse does not tremble to portray the horror of the moment.

If there is a film that has revolutionized contemporary Spanish horror, that is the great little jewel of Paco Plaza and Jaume Balagueró, who use the found footage format and a Barcelona building to unleash panic in one of the best ‘found footage’ horror films. A virus spreads fast, turning neighbors into violent zombies. And how to escape from a quarantined building? A decade later, ‘REC’ is still just as terrifying.

Although it is not usually considered among the best films by Álex de la Iglesia, ‘The Child’s Room’ gave a lesson in terror in a 76-minute episode, framed in ‘Movies to keep you awake’. And he did it with a most common element, but with immense possibilities: the walkie (built-in camera) to control the baby in his crib during the night. The problem will come when they realize that in that image there is more than just a little newborn… Creepy.

Before ‘Julia’s eyes’, the filmmaker Guillem Morales surprised with this disturbing film in which a stranger sneaks into the house of a troubled man, and makes the sadness that his girlfriend has left him become the least of his (mental) problems.

Although without any surprises in its plot, this movie can ensure you have a very scary time. Luis de la Madrid directs this 21st century slasher in which six young girls boarding school live in fear of a nun. What can be more terrifying than a nun? Or is it that you have not yet seen the movies of the ‘The Conjuring’ universe?

The Mexican Guillermo del Toro signed this Spanish production with Marisa Paredes and Eduardo Noriega, which places us in an orphanage of the Spanish post-war period. The tribute to the republican side that fought fascism and lost the war unfolds in a story that, however, its main character is a boy and his paranormal connections with the spirits that live with him. One of Guillermo del Toro’s best films.

Jaume Balagueró adapts a novel by Ramsey Campbell in this disturbing film of sects and various intrigues. The existence of a hidden evil, of a group of people who are nothing but shadowsdominate the central axis of this film starring Emma Vilarasau and Karra Elejalde, who are willing to take you on their terrifying descent into hell.

25 years after ‘Tesis’, Alejandro Amenábar’s first film which won 7 Goyas and promoted him as the most promising director of Spanish cinema, is still a wonderful thriller, tense and terrifying, violent and disturbing, that made us love and hate Eduardo Noriega in equal measure. A classic of Spanish cinema that will never expire and that continues to be enjoyed as one of the best horror movies on HBO Max.

With a script by Dick Randall and Joe D’Amato, the filmmaker Juan Piquer Simón brought to the screen a classic ‘slasher’ with a Spanish name, but an American setting. And neither more nor less: a multitude of murdered women, a police in search of the truth, a ruthless serial killer. All the ingredients for a classic eighties brand Spain.

Based on a novel by Juan José Plans, this Spanish horror classic should never be forgotten. Narciso Ibáñez Serrador takes us to an island populated by children, who will rebel against the adults and take two innocent English tourists along the path of their revolution They just wanted a quiet vacation. More than 40 years have passed since its premiere, but its echo continues to resonate very strongly.