On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. 2017 Spanish supernatural horror film directed veronica heart Paco Plaza which stars Sandra Escacena alongside Claudia Placer, Bruna González, Iván Chavero and Ana Torrent.
It is loosely based on true events from the 1991 Vallecas case where Estefanía Gutiérrez Lázaro died mysteriously after she used a ouija board. The film opens in 1991 in medias res, with emergency services responding to a call from a young girl. She sounds panicked and screams about something coming to get her brother before the call cuts off. The film goes back in time three days. Verónica is a 15-year-old girl living with her mother and three young siblings in an apartment in the working-class district of Vallecas, Madrid. Verónica and her friends Rosa and Diana go into the basement to conduct a séance using a Ouija board. Verónica wants to reach out to her late father, and Diana her late boyfriend, who died in a motorcycle accident.
Rosa and Diana pull their hands back when the glass cup becomes too hot. Verónica begins experiencing paranormal occurrences and her friends avoid her. Looking for answers, she goes back to the school basement and finds the school’s elderly blind nun whom the students call “Sister Death. The nun explains that the séance attached a dark spirit to her and tries to compel the spirit to leave, but nothing happens. Verónica draws protective Viking symbols for the kids, only for the demon to destroy them. She tries to help Lucia when the spirit chokes her, but Lucia says it was Verónica who was choking her. Verónica wakes up to find that she’s on her first period.
As she scrubs her mattress, she finds burn marks on the underside. Desperate, Verónica decides to hold the séance with her siblings. She has Antoñito draw the protective symbols on the walls, but he flips to the wrong page and instead draws symbols of invocation. When she tells the spirit to say goodbye, it refuses. She calls the police and escapes with her siblings. However, she sees that she is not actually holding Antoñito but had imagined it. Her brother is actually hiding in a closet.
She finds him but he won’t go with her. Five years later in 1996, he reports of unexplained paranormal activity having occurred in Madrid. It is explained that the movie is based on the true events of the first police report in Spain where a police officer certifies having witnessed paranormal activity. Madrid to try to contact her friend’s deceased boyfriend who had died six months earlier. Her exact cause of death is a mystery.
Her house allegedly became haunted after her death according to the British magazine NME. The screenplay was penned by Paco Plaza alongside Fernando Navarro. The film was produced by Apache Films alongside El Expediente La Película AIE, with the participation of RTVE and support from ICAA. Verónica originally released on 25 August 2017 in Spain. In addition, the film was released in eight other countries between the months of December 2017 up until February 2018. The film was selected for the lineup of the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival’s Contemporary World Cinema section.
The website’s critical consensus reads, “A scarily effective horror outing, Veronica proves it doesn’t take fancy or exotic ingredients to craft skin-crawling genre thrills. Overall though he sums up his film review with “Thick on chills, thin on psychology. Shortly after the release of Verónica on Netflix Jordan Crucchoila of Vulture countered other reviewers who believe that Verónica is the scariest movie on Netflix “In our estimation, Veronica is not that scary. It’s a worthy effort, but as far as witch-board movies go, you’ll get more out of Ouija 2: Origin of Evil. Paco Plaza and written by Jorge Guerricaechevarría. Investigating the true story behind Veronica, the new Netflix horror movie about summoning a demon during an eclipse”.