Flashes of Víctor Garcia’s Spanish-language The Communion Girl accentuate its creepy folkloric horror. Garcia’s experience churning out mid-tier genre flicks like Mirrors 2 and Return to House on Haunted Hill validates that he knows how to sell “scary” as a dreary, dreadful visual medium. It’s a shame that at its best, The Communion Girl reeks of better lore-driven horror standouts like The Ring or La Llorona. Writer Guillem Clua relies on blueprints exhaustingly familiar to ravenous horror fans, picking and choosing influences that never Voltron into ferocious originality. The basics are sound, but The Communion Girl’s ambitions are too redundantly straightforward—a serviceable-at-best rehash best suited for fresher-faced horror fans.
The Communion Girl is set in the late 1980s, but period aesthetics are hardly a defining characteristic here, besides an excuse to depict hitchhiking and an arcade sequence with 8-bit chiptune music. Sara (Carla Campra) and Rebe (Aina Quiñones) are small-town partiers who—after hopping in the car of skeevy drug dealer Chivo (Carlos Oviedo) for a ride home—might or not be haunted by an urban legend. Chivo drives the girls off-road as a prank, despite disapproval from co-pilot Pedro (Marc Soler), where Sara swears she sees a ghostly figure in white attire pass in front of their speeding vehicle. The group finds nothing except a tattered porcelain doll, associated with props held by young girls celebrating their first communion, which Sara brings home—along with a mysterious skin tag and new nightmarish visions.
Without a tightened screenplay, The Communion Girl feels like it’s checking required boxes to impress horror fans. A ghoulish creature that loves jump scares? Secretive mythology brushed under a rug and away from endangered characters? Nightly events that stoke paranormal paranoia? Garcia has some fun toying with blasphemous theological commentaries and the communion girl’s ability to transport victims to a watery alternate realm, but both aspects become repetitive and less enticing over time. Garcia’s instincts are sharp when painting terrifying pictures like Ed Warren in The Conjuring 2, but Clua’s dull script weakens what tastes like watered-down Horror Lite.
The Communion Girl compares more to Michael Chaves’ basic-bland The Curse of La Llorona than Spanish horror standouts from [REC] to The Orphanage or anything directed by Álex de la Iglesia. Where I often praise Spanish horror films for their rich marriage of culturally significant storytelling and freer creative spirits, herein lies limper mimicry that lifts and reproduces. Don’t get me wrong, movies are allowed to wear their influences on their sleeves—the difference is how The Communion Girl relies on them. Not only that, but its cop-out ending cuts to black precisely when Clua and Garcia could have finally taken their film somewhere unique. Nods to Samara and Sadako’s murky well grave or Annabelle-like dolly placement are the film’s lasting impressions, while Garcia struggles to make a case for his own movie.
Outside its recycled ideas, The Communion Girl is suitably acted and competently executed. Seamless chemistry between Campra’s new-in-town outsider and Quiñones’s spunky foosball ace makes them easy to root for, while supporting characters fulfill their duties as overprotective parents or love-interest allies. There’s even a nifty emphasis on practical effects, specifically the bloated and zombie-like spirit who haunts Sara and her companions. Garcia’s consistent work is a testament to his understanding of horror craftsmanship, but his frequent relegation to directing lesser-known sequels might be a tell about what to expect.
It’s a shame, because The Communion Girl displays stretches of excitement unworthy of its underwhelming fate. Perhaps theatergoers who only venture into horror once every few months will encounter something more horrifying, but as a Shudder release, there are a billion other streamable titles in their catalog more deserving of your attention. The Communion Girl too complacently relies on replaying the hits, unable to differentiate itself from popularized genre inspirations. If The Communion Girl’s ending didn’t rob its viewers, this review might be more forgiving, but as is, the movie fails to assert itself beyond what we’ve seen, heard and forgotten before.
Director: Víctor Garcia
Writer: Guillem Clua
Starring: Carla Campra, Aina Quiñones, Marc Soler, Carlos Oviedo
Release Date: July 21, 2023
Matt Donato is a Los Angeles-based film critic currently published on SlashFilm, Fangoria, Bloody Disgusting, and anywhere else he’s allowed to spread the gospel of Demon Wind. He is also a member of the Hollywood Critics Association. Definitely don’t feed him after midnight.