| Cover Art |
 |
| Credits |
Director: Augustin
Villaronga
Starring: Maria Barranco,
Terele Pavez, Angel de Andres Lopez, Ruth Gabriel,
Simón Andreu
Screenplay: Lourdes
Iglesias, Jesus Regueria, Augustin Villaronga
Country: Spain
AKA: 99.9 - La Frecuencia
del Terror |
Given the disturbing nature of his earlier In
A Glass Cage, it's no surprise that
Augustin Villaronga's sublime 99.9 manages to get deep under your skin from the very
start.
Radio host Lara (Pedro Almodovar regular Maria
Barranco) receives word that her former lover
has been found naked and gruesomely impaled on
cemetery railings in a village somewhere deep
in the Spanish countryside. When she learns that
he was conducting experiments in contacting the
souls of the dead, she sets out to investigate
the circumstances surrounding his strange death.
Hostile villagers try to convince her to leave,
but despite this Lara discovers an old farmhouse
where the research was carried out - a ruin where
a massacre once took place and the walls are daubed
with what appear to be the screaming faces of
the dead. As the mystery deepens, Lara starts
to fear for her life. Was her lover the victim
of something supernatural, or was he murdered
by human hands?
Drenched in atmosphere and saturated with a deep
sense of impending doom similar to Pupi Avati's The House With The Laughing Windows, 99.9 is a taut, suspenseful thriller
that cleverly never firmly answers all of the
questions it poses. The cinematography by Javier
Aguirresarobe of The Others fame
succeeds in turning the beautiful sierras of Jaen,
Andalusia into a haunted, hostile landscape of
tumbledown villas and decomposing farmhouses.
The acting is particularly strong and helps Villaronga
to craft an utterly convincing slice of rural
Hispanic gothica. And when the violence comes,
it arrives with a nasty, sadistic streak a mile
wide, which is always a good thing.
Useless trivia: The film's title refers to a
radio station frequency, but according to the
director it also represents the (inverted) number
of the beast. |
