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The Grandmother: Paco Plaza Ventures into Psychological Horror with a Cold Compress Over Celluloid

The film unspools like a sterile but icy bandage in Claqueta Ácida’s screening room. Paco Plaza, the man who gifted us the adrenaline rush of [REC] (2007) and its sequel—a feast of rotting flesh and screams trapped in a Barcelona elevator—decided in 2021 it was time for a radical change of pace. Goodbye to frenetic first-person action, hello to slow-burn psychological horror. The leap isn’t flawless, but it’s a kamikaze act of bravery that demands analysis. The Grandmother (2022) is his latest creation, an attempt to channel the dense atmospheres of Ari Aster or Robert Eggers, draping Spanish realism in the trappings of witchcraft, aging, and physical decay.

We’re in the era of "elevated horror," where the genre has become a banquet of social metaphors. Plaza isn’t new to this—his film Verónica (2017) already explored domestic drama with mastery—but here, he pushes the narrative tempo to its breaking point. Shot under the strict, suffocating protocols of the pandemic, the film translates that same disconnection and isolation onto the screen. The script comes courtesy of Carlos Vermut, the Spanish cinema’s enfant terrible (Magical Girl). The result of this collaboration is a magnetic yet occasionally self-indulgent screenplay: Susana (Almudena Amor), a model in Paris, returns to Madrid to care for her grandmother Pilar (Vera Valdez), who has just suffered a stroke. What begins as a palliative care drama reminiscent of Haneke’s Amour (2012) slowly warps into an unsettling ritual of mirrors and glances that freeze the blood.

finalExplicado: "La abuela culmina con Susana (Almudena Amor) descubriendo que su abuela (Vera Valdez) no está poseída ni enferma: simplemente ha transferido su conciencia a su cuerpo joven, ocupándolo por completo mientras el cuerpo anciano se marchita. La anciana, ahora en la piel de Susana, se mira al espejo con una sonrisa triunfal y cruel, mientras la verdadera Susana queda atrapada en el cascarón decrépito. Simbólicamente, el desenlace es una alegoría brutal y sin consuelo sobre el paso del tiempo: la vejez no es un estado, sino una depredadora que devora y suplanta a la juventud. El horror real no es sobrenatural, sino biológico e inevitable: la vida se alimenta de la siguiente generación hasta extinguirla. Un final gélido, nihilista y perfectamente coherente con su terror de autor."

Direction: Plaza in Pursuit of Formal Restraint

If there’s one thing Paco Plaza knows how to do, it’s trapping us with fear. But if [REC]’s claustrophobia was loud, The Grandmother’s is icy and silent. His direction here operates with surgical precision, prioritizing stylized visual design over cheap scares. The framing is sober, elegant, and painterly: slow tracking shots through dimly lit hallways and a tenebrist lighting scheme in a bourgeois Madrid apartment that finds beauty in decay.

The pacing is, without a doubt, the most divisive element of the film. Plaza abandons commercial rhythm for a narrative simmered at the slowest possible heat. Some shots linger, forcing the audience to confront the discomfort of bodily decay, shattering the expectations of those seeking a jump-scare fest. This isn’t a movie about startling its audience; it’s a piece of suffocating atmosphere where the sound—minimalist and abstract, designed by Fatima Al Qadiri—blurs into the unsettling silence of the theater.

Acting: A Colossal Intergenerational Showdown

If the film sustains its subterranean tension, it’s thanks to the titanic work of its two leads. Almudena Amor, who already dazzled in The Good Boss (2021), carries the dramatic weight, conveying a vulnerability and frustration that’s utterly contagious. Beside her, legendary model and muse Vera Valdez is a visual whirlwind. Valdez needs no digital tricks; her imposing physique, aristocratic gaze, and physical presence convey the raw, unflinching horror of aging in a way that’s more chilling than any conventional monster.

Vermut’s script opts for a mathematical coldness that sometimes strips the relationship of warmth, turning their scenes together-la-cueva-de-los-espejos-rotos" class="text-amber-400 font-black hover:text-amber-300 transition underline decoration-amber-500/40 hover:decoration-amber-300" title="[6.5/10 ⚡ Ácido Cítrico] Lee nuestra autopsia de «Together»" data-acid-interlink="together-la-cueva-de-los-espejos-rotos">together into a frigid formal exercise. Yet this detachment reinforces the film’s thesis: the total isolation of two women trapped in an apartment frozen in time.

Technical Aspects: Frosty Aesthetic Perfection

The production design is impeccable, though paradoxical. We’re in a stately apartment with high ceilings, decorated with old-world taste but so meticulously pristine it feels like an art gallery. The cinematography by Daniel Fernández Abelló is a visual delight: it plays with reflections, duplicated mirrors, and a color palette that shifts between the loneliness of the Parisian runway and the deathly gloom of the Madrid home.

The editing stretches the mundane care scenes to exhaustion, making us complicit in Susana’s ordeal, though it abruptly accelerates in a final act that embraces the genre’s most classic tropes. It’s in this stretch where the psychological subtlety built up collides with the need for an esoteric resolution, a toll that slightly fractures the film but doesn’t derail the journey.

The best

• A monumental acting duel: The chemistry and physical contrast between Almudena Amor and a magnetic Vera Valdez.
• Paco Plaza’s boldness: The risk of stepping out of his comfort zone to deliver his most restrained, mature, and stylized film yet.
• Fernández Abelló’s cinematography: A flawless visual showcase that turns the apartment into a frigid, living character.

The worst

• A conventional final act: A resolution that resorts to more traditional solutions, breaking the prior psychological subtlety.
• Excessively slow pacing: Its obsession with atmosphere may alienate those seeking a more visceral brand of horror.

The Verdict of Claqueta Ácida

The Grandmother isn’t the kind of horror Paco Plaza usually serves up, and that’s both its greatest virtue and its biggest hurdle. It’s a stylized, stunningly beautiful, and deeply unsettling work that uses horror’s tropes to confront a real monster: the terror of aging and being forgotten in a society obsessed with youth. While Carlos Vermut’s script occasionally veers into coldness and its final act gambles on predictable solutions, the oppressive atmosphere and the powerhouse performances of Almudena Amor and Vera Valdez elevate the experience. A bold, high-scoring exercise in auteur horror that leaves your heart in your throat. 💀

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