13 Curses (2002)

Please don't spend money on this.

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Jacobo (Juan Diego )is a young sculptor that goes back to Santiago of Compostela, to see his mummy (Elvira Minguez), locked up a psychiatric hospital for to murder to her husband named Mateo (Luis Tosar), when he thought she dead years ago . To their arrival, visions of Mateo, his dead father several years ago, begin to chase to him, especially, when thirteen peals sounded in the cathedral, fact what obsesses to Jacobo . Fatigued of insomnia receives estrange and indecipherable visions that seem a bizarre riddle and going on with odds events are happening when he aware the true intentions of the ghost of his father. He hasn't slept and suffers hallucinations , risking his own life causing injuries by hanging . Psychopathic, haunting visions by Jacobo and his madness embroils two women ,a beautiful young ( Marta Etura ) who falls in love with him , and an art gallery owner (Laura Maña) increasingly besides with apparition his father a who nobody have ever seen . He tries to resolve which believes to be a scheme against him and various mysterious deeds occur until the final enigma . After watching long time, the father convinces Jacobo to make the work for the cathedral that Mateo couldn't terminate in life, but what starts as a simple job turns a nightmare .The film contains mystery, violence, suspense in a dark atmosphere with imposing tension and intrigue. Juan Diego who holds a strong Argentinian accent makes a fine performance as depressed young who returns his native town that leads a madness spiral. He is well accompanied by gloomy characters as Luis Tosar as reappeared father .The film is well shot in Santiago De Compostela , showing spectacularly the monuments, streets and the breathtaking cathedral . Colorful cinematography by Javier Salmones is good , creating a frightening and scary atmosphere . Mesmerizing and intriguing musical score by Javier Navarrete. The flick is finely produced by the chairman of Filmax Productions , Julio Fernandez , a successful producer and expert on terror genre , producer of hits as ¨The machinist¨, ¨Rec 1, y 2¨ ,¨ Fragiles¨, ¨Darkness¨, and many others . The motion picture is middling realized by Galician director Xavier Villaverde , because resulting to be slow moving and little bit boring , it's his third film , formerly he directed ¨Continental¨ and ¨Finisterre¨ . The picture was a box office flop being the filmmaker's last work . Rating : Average .

In 1984, in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, the boy Jacobo witnesses his mother killing his father, the artist Mateo (Luis Tosar), with a shotgun when the local cathedral sounded thirteen tolls. Eighteen years later, the also artist Jacobo (Juan Diego Botto) returns to his hometown from Buenos Aires answering the call of his childhood friend Maria (Marta Etura) to visit his schizophrenic mother that has been sentenced to a psychiatric hospital for killing her husband. Jacobo believed his mother had died years ago, and he is under medication due to frequent clangs of bell that he hears. Jacobo is advised by his mother to leave the town, and sooner he is haunted by Mateo that wants him to finish his work for the local cathedral."Trece Campanadas" is an underrated psychological / supernatural thriller. The story is well constructed and resolved in spite of I have partially guessed the mystery in the middle of the movie; therefore, the director Xavier Villaverde and the writers have successfully accomplished their objective of making a good movie. The unknown (at least for me) Juan Diego Botto and Marta Etura have great performances and show a perfect chemistry and Luis Tosar gives another efficient work. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "13 Badaladas" ("13 Tolls")

Does anyone have any idea why this was rated nc-17? I saw nothing that would put it anywhere close to a "hard R", much less a more adult rating. Once again, the ratings board throws a curve to anyone interested in movies with more controversial/graphic/racy content, as this one shows none of that at all. Could it be that it was edited out after the nc-17 was awarded? If so, this makes no sense---why would you release the movie as an unrated edition and cleave out the content that made it an nc-17? A question better plied to the distributors, perhaps... Despite my questions, I really enjoyed the movie. Not a totally novel premise, but well produced and acted.Also--IMDb needs to fix their software, typing nc-17 in all caps is correct, not shouting!

Okay, in a world where it seems like no good American horror movies are being made (and special-effects-happy producers are grabbing like greedy children for the rights to remake and otherwise ruin perfectly sound old movies for lack of original ideas in new movies) I have begun to lose faith in the genre. Now don't get me wrong; I believe a truly fantastic horror flick is hard--nay, darn near impossible--to find, but I have rarely been disappointed when I look to the Europeans, for they seem to have a better hold on suspense and thrill than we do here in the States.I'll admit, I basically have a Blockbuster Rewards membership, and so anytime I check out a new release movie (such as The Wicker Man, in this case) I like to check out a companion non-new-release one, too (especially since it comes free). This month I chose this one...and I was certainly not disappointed.I didn't have high expectations for this, and I am still boggled by how the DVD cover translates "trece campanedas" into "13 curses" when it more accurately refers (in the film and in proper language) to "13 chimes," but everything else about the movie is quite good. I rarely enjoy these supernatural psychological thrillers, but I have to say that this one ranks up there with the better ones. The careful weaving in and out of our hero's mind very successfully blurs the line between fantasy and reality; yet miraculously, you're not left at the end of the movie still trying to piece everything together and discovering plot holes, and you don't have difficulty "keeping up" as the movie goes along, either. Yeah, the ending is pretty predictable (and feels a bit 'rushed' relative to the rest of the film), and the whole movie is fairly formulaic for the genre, but it is far better executed than many American attempts at the same. (Think "Hide and Seek" done with a more believable cast and much eerier consistency.) I really, really liked the characters. There is nothing that frustrates me more than a film in which you cannot latch onto any of the characters and just utterly don't care for any of them--especially when you're SUPPOSED to. That isn't a flaw of this movie, for sure, and the acting is quite fine--for the most part. I think the ghost-father is perhaps a little too over-the-top for me and might have been more believably if he were quietly manipulative of his son and wife rather than so overtly violent towards them. But that's not this filmmaker's choice, and I still think it works.The cinematography is quite refreshing and consistent, and the overall pacing of the movie feels only slightly on the slow side (89 minutes would have sufficed, instead of 108, to tell this story and do it justice), but you don't feel like the time is "wasted" really; there is relatively little uninteresting time on camera. I personally LOVED the scenes of the boy working on the sculpture; it was incredibly believable and provides some amazing insight into the labor and art of a sculptor.My overall feeling: It's not genius, but it is quite good and definitely far more worth renting than any new release American horror flick on the market right now.