La Hora Fría is a little-known Spanish horror movie from 2006. I certainly wouldn’t know of it if it hadn’t been for the Fantasy Film Fest, which brings everything from thrillers to horror to science fiction and fantasy to our hometown of Frankfurt every August.
We’re cautious about European films. I know that I’m generalizing to a shocking degree, but most of the film output of the European continent can only be described as pretentious. Or disgusting, that’s the other popular flavour it would seem. In some cases both.
La Hora Fría is a pleasant surprise, as it is neither of these. It is difficult to give a plot summary without any important spoilers, but I’ll try to do my best:
Eight people live in some sort of underground bunker. Tiled walls, long corridors – it puts one in mind of an old school building or a hospital. Their days are governed by routine, or maybe they are hiding behind the routine aspects of life, such as food or lessons for the two youngsters, so that they don’t have to think about the world they live in. Information on that is sparse, which is a very important part of the movie. Scriptwriter/director Elio Quiroga never hits us over the head with exposition; we learn about the world by observing it, by watching the propaganda videos that are still running on some screens, by asking the same question our youngest protagonist is asking: tell us about the war.