História do Oculto

Wha?...

This movie is very rich, but in my opinion too short! It feels like if someone tried to trim Pulp Fiction down to 45 minutes.

The other reviews make it seem like there is no action, but there are scenes with movement, and vehicles... the whole swirl of events is fast, pretty deliriously so. At the end you feel like everything just blew by.

But I will think on it more, I feel like there is more to get. Therefore I would say it is worth a watch.

But more for a night when you would enjoy a play--intriguing characters played by a cast that acts continuously very well. Black and white seemed a challenge for me here, but it gives a Twilight Zone feel mixed with a vaporwave dream essence of news and commercials: hard to tell what year this takes place!

"History of the occult" is almost a cosmic political horror, an intriguing story that plays with several figures of speech wrapped in a plot of growing tension, mysticism and strangeness. The direction always seeks to disorient the viewer, but in a positive way, in order to cause an instigating curiosity. With a black and white photograph with few colored details, the feature's aesthetic is one of the points that draw attention, as it speaks to its script, everything is very simple but always very detailed, with light, shadow and three-dimensional effects to cause fear. And tension, many rules are pre-established and a narrative set becomes linear with an occurrence of facts that follows a path, but even so we are lost about the outcome of the work and its subtexts. The performances of "History of the Occult" are good for a low-budget film, the ramifications of its script are great and its horror construction too, in fact, the film scares, not in a silly and fleeting way, we were really amazed by its subtleties . 8/10 grade.

Blending television broadcast, government conspiracy & powerful witchcraft into an unnerving chiller, History of the Occult is a politically charged & patiently manifesting horror that steadily escalates into a full-fledged nightmare as it progresses, and also benefits from the foreboding atmosphere, surreal imagery, sustained tension & convincing performances.

Written & directed by Cristian Ponce, the story follows the final episode of a famous journalism show that's hosting its last guest who may expose a conspiracy that connects the government with an obscure secret society. Ponce draws the context from Argentine history for his film and it's also the key to deciphering its layers which makes it more suited to the local demographic.

While the unfolding series of events are difficult to follow at times and don't make sense without context to an outsider, the execution of the eerie elements interacting with ongoing investigation does invoke a creepy aura that crawls under the skin. Adding more to the film's sense of unease is the uncanny camerawork, hypnotic visuals & increasing restlessness as the TV show nears its end.

Overall, History of the Occult isn't an easy film to decode in a single sitting if you don't have the means to unlock its mysteries yet the uncomfortable experience it provides from minimal resources is worth noting. There is plenty to unpack here, lots of puzzle pieces to put together but the way it plays with our perception of reality and exudes a dark, mysterious & haunting power makes it worth viewing anyway.

Atmospheric, mysterious, somber, oblique, apocalyptic. Goes needlessly off the rails a bit when hallucinogens are introduced in that always-disappointing way which has the filmmaker apparently thinking that gas lighting the viewer into wondering what is real and what is a hallucination is somehow entertaining or clever. It's similar to movies in which something creepy or startling happens but, oh gee, it was just a dream. These tactics are ineffective cliches and almost always bring a movie down a notch or two in my book. Despite these shortcomings this is a pretty cool movie with an impactful inclusion. It does come down to literally the last 30 seconds, in which we see that a stylistic element that had been introduced earlier in the film as seemingly a mere stylistic element is actually part of the story.

Side note: I have to wonder whether the name of one of the antagonists being Belasco is a nod to The Legend of Hell House, the Richard Matheson novel, and if a reference to Beaumont Street is a nod to Charles Beaumont, who wrote some of the best Twilight Zone episodes. This movie does have a very Twilight Zoney feel to it so maybe it's not a coincidence.

Watched at BeAfraidHorrorFestival and BAM!!!! it blowed my mind! One of the best movie of the year. if they had a bigger budget they would have done a masterpiece as The lighthouse. MUST TO WATCH if you love good cinema. <3