Don't Listen Movie Review - Cover Your Ears

The new Spanish horror on Netflix has some neat surprises but needed more tension and better-executed jump scares.

Often while watching a movie, especially if it is horror, one usually tends to catch the story's pulse. It's not hard to guess the roadmap after seeing a happy just moved-in-to-a-haunted-house family witnessing strange yet familiar noises coming from the telephone. Usually, the spirit uses the smallest kid as the puppet to warn the family and us about its presence. While the adults get busy with their jobs, the ghost hatches plans to possess the child's body.

The above description sums up my conceptions formed after 4-5 minutes into Ángel Gómez Hernández's Don't Listen. Eric (Lucas Blas), the nine-year-old son of Daniel (Rodolfo Sancho) and Sara (Belén Fabra), falls under the radar of the evil lurking in his new home. Eric speaks of sounds that cause him trouble getting sleep at night. In the opening stretch, this confession is made to a psychologist. The house cannot be vacated as all the money has been invested in the property. So far, so typical. Don't Listen establishes a run-of-the-mill premise: a boy gets dominated by a spirit causing upheaval in the family until exorcised by a priest. I was very assured of my prognosis. But somewhere around the 22-minute mark, things twist in another direction affecting like a slap on my cheeks for making up stupid predictions. It was the director's way of "reminding me" to not judge a book by its cover. I loved it.

Now after watching the whole film, I must report with a heavy heart that the rest of Don't Listen lacks the same ingenuity. Filled with an ear-splitting score accompanying the been-there-spooked-before jump scares, Don't Listen quickly falls under a generic horror machine. Figures appear, disappear, disappear, disappear, and appear with a deafening sound throwing people off-balance on both sides of the screen. The going up and down on the bed? Check. Unexplained hand marks? Check. Illusions in the distance? Check. Using pans and tracking shots to delay jump scares? Check. Getting manipulated by familiar voices mimicked by the dead? Check. Light flickering to the beats of the ghost slowly approaching its target? Check. Okay, what about false jump scares? Well, check.

Don't Listen is more chilling when it doesn't underline the evil's presence. There are shots where the apparition is blurred in the background and is noticeable only when it moves (cinematography by Pablo Rosso). The effect created is genuinely frightening because of how natural it looks. In reality, no background score will fire up if we are in the proximity of any ghost or spirit. You may be watching TV, and something could draw in closer to you, quietly. One of the best scenes has the ghost so hidden in the back that when a hand arrives near an unconscious man, the heart skips a beat. These let's say casual sightings fare better than the ones spawned using elaborate plannings. The sudden lackadaisical placing of a figure in a thermal scanner and a computer screen is far more affecting. Then there is one particular scare involving hanging and breaking a window, which can be truly categorized as "shit your pants scary." Still, nothing can beat the fear of getting a fly inside your ear.

Santiago Diaz's screenplay has another twist in its lines. A remark is made about the voice's sinister intentions and how it becomes too late by the time one recognizes it. Similarly, the ambition of this seemingly straightforward screenplay is revealed at the end. Don't Listen aims for a sequel, probably even a franchise. I admit I liked the way it shifted gears. Santiago and Hernández know how to introduce unfamiliarity in familiar territory. All that cleverness now needs to be administered in the cookie-cutter scares. If nothing else, try raising the stakes next time.

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