Al tercer día

Mariana Angheleri is the only reason for my four star rating. She is much better than the material here. She is escaping from a domineering ex with her boy when she has a car accident. What follows is a mess. A priest recites the Apostles' Creed, thus, "on the third day." He goes on a bloody rampage without explanation. I can appreciate a good devil themed film such as The Exorcist or The Omen, but they had clear and concise story lines. On the Third Day is an incomprehensible mess.

RESERVED ONLY FOR HORROR FANS.

Very unique low budget film

On the 3rd Day is a great lesson in building suspense. Almost at the beginning of the film, we know something horrific has happened, but we don't know what. The filmmakers take a non-linear method of storytelling, relying primarily on flashbacks, in order to gradually reveal clues leading up to the final shocking moments. There is also a lot of unique mythos created for the film around some familiar concepts to horror fans, making things a bit more interesting. The pacing is perfect and the storytelling method perfectly keeps the audience on the edge of their seats. Anghileri gives an especially powerful performance as Cecilia, making sure the audience truly cares about what happened to her and her son. On top of that, On the 3rd Day has a beautiful musical score to add to the tension as well as delightfully disturbing practical effects. I will say, the practical effects for the final big reveal and an end-credit scene are not my favorite, but a majority of the film is near-perfect.

Where do I begin?

1. A bunch of characters who seem pretty unrelated and you have no idea what they have to do with one another.

2. Either dubbing from Spanish, or a drunk audio engineer.

3. Make up your mind: is it a demon or vampire movie, or something completely different?

4. The first 90% of the film had nothing scary and no relevance.

I only gave it 5 stars because the "monster" looked good.

This film is well made, looks wonderful, and is acted well. The problem with this film that brings it to a mediocre spot is the simplistic nature of the plot. The story details a woman who after a car accident doesn't remember what happened or what happened to her son who was in the car.

The rest of the film is an effort for this woman to find her memory of her son. A police investigation is happening at the same time as this woman tries to unlock her mind with a supernatural method. But, what is uncovered is more horrifying than having to face the disappearance of her son.

Unfortunately, the rest of the plot unfolds similar to the standard ideas of this type of film. Nothing really new or inventive. But, it is crafted well.

I'm afraid that I agree with the 2 other reviews here (at this point) I did give it a '5', which is generous, for the nice lighting and at least the EFFORT to create a good Gothic mood.

When I saw Del Toro films in the intro I was very hopeful, because Guillermo Del Toro is indeed one of my VERY favourite living directors. BUT... sadly, for some odd reason the story just did not want to gel in an effective way. The elements by themselves and especially the VERY effective mystery created from the beginning certainly seemed to promise a strong, Gothic film. But, and I'm not really sure why, it simply just did not come together in an effective way.

The visuals were very good, I really liked the lighting, the soundtrack, and even the acting was pretty decent across the board (with the one exception of the dopey policeman - I don't know WHERE the hell they dug him up) But, this is just one of those rather mysterious cases where you can't quite tell exactly what went wrong or precisely what the filmmakers did badly, since I feel taken in segments, the story seemed like it SHOULD have been very good. It's not like you can say, 'Oh, the acting is really bad', or 'The writing was poorly done', or 'The direction could have been done better' The reason is kind of uncertain as to why this didn't exactly work. The overall mood and atmosphere was created well. There was a palpable sense of Mystery right from the beginning which effectively draws the audience in, making them wonder what is going on. Even the ending was indeed surprising and not predictable at all. It SOUNDS like it should have worked, but somehow it really didn't...

The only thing I can come up with is a GUESS that perhaps just the way the story was plotted, or the pacing, or maybe the way the events were ordered. I honestly couldn't say.

I mean, the look and mood of the film was most definitely Del Toro, absolutely. But, ultimately the story just didn't work. So, I can't honestly recommend this movie despite its nice look and atmosphere. Perhaps there may be some people who are able to appreciate it more so at some level. But, like I've mentioned, to me personally, for some mysterious reason it just was not that effective.