La casa del fin de los tiempos [The House at the End of Time] (2013)

(In French, On Cable TV, August 2020) Slickly made, ingeniously (if messily) plotted, a bit silly with its fantastic devices, but still interesting enough by itself, The House at the End of Time is also a rare bit of Venezuelan cinema to have broken through to the North American market. Writer-director-producer Alejandro Hidalgo gradually puts together the piece of his narrative as he brings an older woman back to an isolated house, the scene of terrifying crimes thirty years earlier. Wrongfully accused of the murders, she vows to piece together the mystery of who killed her children and husband. The action kicks in high gear once the element of time travel is introduced into the story (it’s not a spoiler if it’s in the title!), but be careful: This is fantastic time travel, not science-fictional. There is no machine, no justification, no mechanism (the film’s exposition contains the word “randomly,” if that helps) – there’s only a thread of dramatic (or horrific) progression. More rationalist viewers will be put off by the messiness of the result, but in terms of creepy-house atmosphere and ingenious application of SF tropes to low-key horror stories, well, The House at the End of Time does much better. It’s not exactly great, but it’s a pleasant-enough surprise to warrant a bit of attention, and let’s face it: it’s not as if we’ve got a glut of Venezuelan horror films, right?