The Nameless

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Movie
German title The Nameless
Original title Los sin nombre
Country of production Spain
original language Spanish
Publishing year 1999
length 102 minutes
Age rating FSK 18
Rod
Director Jaume Balagueró
script Jaume Balagueró
Ramsey Campbell (novel)
production Joan Ginard
music Carles Cases
camera Albert Carreras
Xavi Giménez
cut Luis de la Madrid
occupation

The Nameless is the debut feature film by Spanish director Jaume Balagueró from 1999 . The horror film is based on a novel by Ramsey Campbell and was produced by the film studios Filmax SA and PC Joan Ginard .

action

Even five years after the ritual murder of Claudia Gifford's six-year-old daughter Angela, the manager of the publishing house did not get over the death of her child, which also sealed the end of her marriage to the Englishman Marc. Claudia is still watching family videos from happy days. But now eerie events are happening around the single woman who one day receives a call from a child. The desperate voice on the phone claims to be Angela and not died years ago. In fact, Angela Gifford's body could only be identified by an anatomical feature, a right leg about four centimeters shorter, and a bracelet found with her name on it. The girl reports that she is still being held captive by several people and asks Claudia to come to an empty sanatorium on a beach and not call in the police. In fact, years ago the Giffords had taken their daughter on a trip to the said stretch of coast, so Claudia followed the girl's request.

Claudia discovers several cut-out images of religious motifs in the eerie property, as well as a metal walking aid placed under a wind chime. Driven by the thought that her daughter might still be alive, Claudia goes to see Bruno Massera, the detective who was entrusted with her daughter's murder. Massera, who quit his job two weeks earlier, has suffered a serious loss himself. His pregnant wife passed away a year ago. He tries to make Claudia understand that Angela is dead and that someone seems to be making fun of tormenting her. Claudia no longer believes that her daughter is dead, also because she and her husband were spared identification due to the condition of the corpse. Massera can then be persuaded to investigate the case without the help of the police, but urges Claudia not to do something on her own and to call him if the girl should get in touch.

Massera soon obtained the birth records of children between 1987 and 1989 who had the same anatomical features as Claudia. While Claudia becomes more and more depressed and retires to her daughter's room, which remained untouched after her death, Massera gets to the address of Luisa Aguirre's family, whose right leg, thanks to his badge, which he should have given away long ago is also shortened by four centimeters. His trip to a dilapidated high-rise estate is crowned with success and he learns that the family actually had a daughter who limped and moved away five years ago. He informs Claudia about the inconsistencies in the case. The two receive further information from a university professor who can assign the pictures found by Claudia to a house in Liverpool that belonged to a group called The Nameless . While the pareligious sect, led by the Argentine Santini, settled all over the world, a large number of people disappeared again and again in the respective areas. Santini himself received an 80-year prison sentence in Spain in 1982 for the mistreatment and abuse of two minors. Another defendant, a German doctor who was a member of the Thule Society with Santini and who acted on his instructions, was acquitted for lack of evidence. Claudia recognizes the house in Liverpool, she herself had visited it before.

Quiroga, a reporter for a parapsychological magazine, leads Claudia and Massera on the trail of a video that landed in his editorial office and on which Claudia's phone number was noted. The video shows a naked woman being tortured by several men, as well as Claudia, secretly recorded, how she finds the leg brace in the sanatorium. While Quiroga continues to research on his own against the warnings of his superior, Claudia and Massera meet Santini in prison. The old man, disfigured by an illness, advises his mother to look for Angela where it all began. A tip from Quiroga leads Claudia and Massera to an abandoned hotel in the north of the city. In the remote place where Claudia and her husband Angela fathered, Massera and Quiroga are killed by the supporters of the Nameless. Claudia meets Angela, whose father - Claudia's husband Marc - has chosen her as the tool of the sect. The daughter, who was taught the synthesis of evil in order to attain a higher state of consciousness, kills her father with the weapon of Massera to make sure of her mother's love. Shortly after Claudia's confession of love, the girl kills herself to cause her mother endless suffering in the sense of synthesis.

Reviews

  • Director Balagueró not only creates an uncomfortable atmosphere through the dark colors of the film, but also sprinkled nightmarish, surreal cutscenes into the plot, which give the viewer an uncomfortable feeling of threat, of the uncanny. Carsten Henkelmann, senseofview.de

Awards

Jaume Balagueró's first feature film was awarded numerous prizes. In 2000, the thriller received the Golden Raven at the Brussels International Fantastic Film Festival , the Special Jury Prize at the Gérardmer Film Festival , and the Director's Prize and the Critics' Prize at the International Catalan Cinema Festival in Sitges . The Spanish actress Emma Vilarasau was honored for her role as Claudia Gifford with the Actor Awards at the Sitges Festival and the Catalan film award Butaca .

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Complete review