Search - The Nameless on DVD

A Spanish thriller than ends on a note of horror

Lawrance M. Bernabo | The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota | 08/11/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I just hit play when the menu came up for "Los sin nombre" ("The Nameless") so I watched the film in Spanish with English subtitles, unaware that I could have listened to it dubbed into English. That is just as well because even though "reading" a movie can get to me at times I still have a preference for hearing the actors in their original language. Anyhow, you should be aware going in that you have a choice when watching Jaume Balagueró's 1999 thriller, so do whatever makes you happy.



"Los sin nombre" begins with the discovery of the body of a young girl who was tortured before she was killed and whose body was mutilated after she died. It is only because of a bracelet that she was wearing that her parents are able to make an identification of their daughter, because the police flatly refuse to let them view the body. Instead, the parents can only wail about what has happened to their daughter, Angela, and let their imaginations run away with the horrors that were inflicted on her. We get to see more than the parents, having been given glimpses of the murder and seeing the police examining the corpse, so we agree. It is better the parents not see what has happened.



Then we are five years down the road. Claudia Gifford (Emma Vilarasau), Angela's mother, has seen her marriage destroyed by the tragedy. Bruno Massera (Karra Elejalde), the detective who worked on Angela's case and a series of related murders that have remained unsolved has retired from the police force, having suffered some personal tragedies in his own life. But then Claudia gets a phone call from a young girl claiming to be Angela. She is alive, she tells Claudia, but being held captive. She begs her mother to rescue her before it is too late. As far as the police are concerned Angela is dead, but Claudia finds someone willing to listen in Bruno, who does not like that someone has been killing young girls any more than he does the idea that someone is tormenting the mother of a murdered child.



As the mystery of the Nameless emerges from the shadows we hear about a cult, founded by a crazy person and apparently with ties to Hitler, and that finds tattoos and piercings to be badges of faith. The group practices ritualistic rape, mutilation and murder for their own secret purposes and it is the idea that their activities are moving in accordance with some grand design that elevates the danger. The Nameless are obsessed with perversion of a kind that speaks specifically to taking something pure and perverting it to the cause of evil. If Angela is really alive what have they been doing to her for five years? Claudia has her own unspeakable thoughts along those lines and in her desperation to find and save Angela never stops to think how it is that her daughter can be placing phone calls. In other words, there is more than meets the eye going on here and not in a good way.



"Los sin nombre" is decidedly a European horror/thriller, sticking to the idea that less is more when it comes to showing things. . A story like this works much better in a Catholic country, where a religion that sees evil as a real presence in the world is woven into the culture, although I admit I was surprised that it ended up being a reporter rather than a priest who shows up to provide necessary exposition. Quiroga (Tristan Ulloa) works for a magazine, and like Bruno his main job is to dig up clues to give to Bruno to put before Claudia so that she can figure out the puzzle in time to try and save her daughter. This is because when she finally gets to talk to someone who actually knows about the Nameless, he insists that only Claudia can put the pieces together. Besides, Quiroga is going to have another obligatory function to fulfill in the final scenes of the film.



Another key thing that I liked about this film was that Claudia and Bruno are adults. I was reminded of "The Exorcist," where you had grownups trying to save Regan's soul versus all of the splatter flicks where it is groups of teenagers whose primary purpose is to die horrible deaths. Maybe it is just that it has been so long since I have seen a movie in this genre where I could really identify with the protagonist (or would even want to for reasons other than youthful virility). But what made me round up in the end on this one was that, on balance, I liked the ending, although Balagueró does not play fair with his audience in setting up that ending (he is not helped by having the pivotal character show up with a voice dubbed in Spanish). Sometimes a horror film should end with horror, and "Los sin nombre" certainly does."