6 Films to Keep You Awake (Spectre and The Blame)

I have previously mentioned the collection of films which make up 6 films to Keep You Awake, but it to give a bit more detail about it, it is a collection of six films which were made for TV in Spain, and consist of obviously six different movies made six of Spain’s best directors of horror. FearNet currently has all six of the movies available and so I have decided to watch each of them, as several I had already previously watched without knowing they were a part of this collection, and fond them quite enjoyable and interesting.

The last two films of the collection which I had yet to watch (at least until now) will be featured in this review. The rest of the six films are already posted within my blog. If you want to check them out here is this list of all six films:

The Baby’s Room

XMas Tale

Real Friend

To Let

Spectre

The Blame

I will be reviewing Spectre and The Blame here, reviews for the rest of the films can be found within this blog.

Spectre

This was quite an interesting film I thought. It did have a rather orignal idea, and I enjoyed the psychological angle to it. A film about obsession, young love, passion, and trust (or lack of trust) and how a young man’s infatuation with a mysterious older woman destroys the lives of many people including his own.

In a small Spanish village a mysterious, beautiful woman moves into a house just on the outskirts of the village. It does not take long before rumors start to spread that she is a witch among other things. A group of boys sneak up to her house to spy upon her, and one of them soon develops a passionate obsession with the woman and engages in a secret love affair with her, but he is tormented by the rumors of her as being a loose woman, and that she receives strange visitors at night.

The story is told in the form of flashbacks Tomas as an older man, yet still haunted by his first love, the passion of his youth returns finally to his home after having fled long ago to try and escape the memories, and the image of the woman whose fate became so closely entwined with his. Slowly the story of what happened in those youthful days starts to reveal itself, while as an older man Tomas continued to be tormented by his past.

Rating: 4/5

The Blame

This was an interesting film in many ways and did have a certain creepy element to it. For the most part I enjoyed it, but I did feel, particularly towards that end, that the film took on a bit too much of a propaganda feeling to it, but still the idea behind this film does easily lend itself to horror.

A young nurse who is struggling financially moves in, with her daughter into the house of a female doctor she works with who runs an abortion clinic out of her home. It soon become clear that the doctor might have more than just a friendly interest in the nurse, and starts to become frustrated when the nurse turns down her advances. Then the nurse becomes pregnant as a result of a casual intimate encounter with a man. The doctor persuades her into getting an abortion by dropping subtle hints that if she keeps the child she may lose her room within the house, or might be laid off from her job. Soon after agreeing to the abortion unsettling events start to occur within the house.

Rating: 3/5