Hermana Muerte aka Sister Death [dir. Paco Plaza]

I confess, if it had not been for my trusted fantasy/horror movie reviewer Richard Scheib's positive opinion, Hermana Muerte aka Sister Death would have passed me by as one of those generic Netflix algorithm offerings, conceived as a low-budget knockoff of The Nun franchise. What also intrigued me was that it was made by Paco Plaza, who with Jaume Balaguero created [REC], a ferocious zombie movie that turned out one of the best examples of the found footage genre, and one of only two I find sufficiently rewatchable to have in my movie collection (the other is the Japanese film One Cut of the Dead, which brilliantly turns the concept on its head).

But Sister Death is as far away as it gets from [Rec]. The first thing that makes an impression is the film's presentation in the now-unusual 4:3 Academy aspect ratio. It could be a nod to the post-WW2 setting of the film, but it also harks back to an earlier age of cinema. Hollywood shifted to widescreen in the 50's, and other film industries followed suit across the next few decades. The mass adoption of widescreen home displays in more recent times means that this ratio is now wholly discarded from mainstream entertainment. It is now only occasionally seen, in the work of arthouse favorites like Andrea Arnold or Pawel Pawlikowski. Sister Death's visuals (DoP Daniel Abello) are composed specifically for the non-standard ratio, which at least indicates that the makers have a specific vision for this project; it is a not simply a work-for-hire.

The narrative has strong parallels with Guillermo Del Toro's 2001 chiller The Devil's Backbone (TDB). In that film, a young boy brought to an orphanage during the time of the Spanish civil war experiences a spectral terror rooted in the place's dark past. In Sister Death, novitiate Sister Narcisa (a radiant Aria Bedmar) enters a convent where young girls are sheltered. She is enthusiastically welcomed by the Mother Superior (Luisa Merelas) who is eager to have her ordained, mainly on account of her reputation as a little girl who had a divine revelation (this is depicted at the beginning of the film using scratchy, vintage-looking footage). Less cordial is the Mother Superior's lieutenant Sister Julia (Maru Valdivielso), who appears to resent Narcisa's fame.  Narcisa herself appears to be having a conflict of faith, doubting the veracity of her childhood vision, waiting for some confirmatory sign from the divine. Some articles on the film have commented on Narcisa's name being a reference to Narcissus, which is an interesting angle on how her actions are interpreted later in the film.

Unlike Hollywood's higher-profile horror pictures, Sister Death doesn't attempt to beat down on your head with jump scares. Initially, all Narcisa sees are a chair that repeatedly tips over, and an abandoned glass marble. Then things build up. Even though nothing is particularly novel (and banging doors are so cliche), the film generates some solid disturbing moments, like when Narcisa finds herself in an impromptu pastry tasting that has a nasty climax. The film also suggests that in her eagerness to decipher the mysterious happenings, she may have inadvertently caused a child's death. Eventually, after paying a steep personal price, Narcisa uncovers the truth of the hauntings in the convent's shameful war-time past. Like in TDB, we see that the spooky spectral entity is not necessarily the source of evil, but a response to the corruption in human beings.

Sister Death lacks the epic sweep of Del Toro's film, and it doesn't twist your gut the way [Rec] did, but in its contained modest way, this is a solid well-made chiller, worth your time and attention.

P.S. Sister Death is supposed to be a prequel to another horror film called Veronica. I haven't seen it, and I can at least confirm that it is not a pre-requisite to appreciating this film.