Format: DVD from Hanover Public Library through interlibrary loan on basement television.
There is a thin line between what makes a movie a horror movie versus a thriller. In my own head, I tend to think of thrillers as films based more in the real world, while horror films tend to have more of a supernatural element. Of course, that’s a line that gets blurred a great deal, more on the horror side of things. There’s nothing supernatural about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or The Silence of the Lambs (or Hostel for that matter), yet these are clearly horror films. The Nameless (called Los Sin Nombre in the original Spanish, and the copy I watched had the title as the Catalan Els sense nom) is a film that straddles the line between thriller and horror. There are hints of supernatural here, but are they real? Or is it just something that feels like the supernatural because we’ve been manipulated to think that way?
The film begins with the discovery of the body of a young girl. The body is found in a manhole by Spanish police, mutilated beyond recognition. The belief is that everything done to the body was done to mask her identity, but several clues—a bracelet with her name on it and the fact that one of her legs is shorter than the other—leads to her being identified as Angela Gifford. Her parents, Claudia (Emma Vilarasau) and Marc (Brendan Price) are naturally overcome with grief
We jump five years into the future. Claudia and Marc are no longer together. Claudia is strung on out medication and has a possessive and mildly insane ex named Toni (Pep Tosar) when, out of the blue, she receives a phone call from someone claiming to be Angela (Jessica Del Pozo). Claudia is convinced this might be real—the voice sounded like her daughter and describes a place where they used to go. Claudia visits the seaside location where they used to travel and finds a deserted clinic nearby, covered in bizarre imagery of angels as well as an orthopedic boot. Not sure how to handle this, she contacts the local police, looking for Massara (Karra Elejalde), the man who had her daughter’s case originally. Massara is no longer with the force, but since this is an unclosed case, he decides to look into it on his own time.
A little investigation turns up the fact that Angela’s disappearance coincided with that of another girl who had a similar issue of one leg shorter than the other, meaning that Angela’s death could have been faked. Further research turns up a Satanic cult called “The Nameless” (hence the name of the film) who believe in a pursuit of absolute evil. The path, they believe, is through terrible acts of evil and violence. The cult also believes in ego stripping—essentially losing one’s name to the cause of the cult. Being unnamed allows them to commit their terrible acts without those things being associated with their names (or their ultimate identity, one assumes). The latest version of the cult was started by a man named Santini (Carlos Lasarte), currently in prison for molesting and torturing children. A meeting with him turns up cryptic messages, but forces Claudia and Massara onward.
Meanwhile, a “journalist” for a National Enquirer-style tabloid (Tristán Ulloa) is doing his own investigation into the same cult, and crosses paths with Claudia. Things progress, albeit slowly, until a final confrontation with the evil that has been building by the Nameless cult.
On the surface, The Nameless looks like a film that wants to explore this idea of terrible, ultimate evil and the depths to which people can sink. The truth is that there are a lot of aspects of other films that are prominent in this one, merely rearranged. There are certainly elements of Rosemary’s Baby here, although it takes us some time to get there. A more obscure film, The Believers, which feature a series of ritualistic child murders. There are also some parallels to The Ninth Gate in terms of exploring the nature and extent of true evil. However, this feels more coincidental since both movies were released around the same time—in fact, The Nameless was released first. The film also touches on themes that would be picked up years later by Martyrs.
If you go into The Nameless expecting a straight horror film, you’re going to be disappointed. There are a few shock moments and some disturbing visuals, but this is a horror movie only in the truest sense of it wanting to create a sense of dread and terror in the audience and it at least nodding to supernatural forces of evil. It is otherwise a very slow burn police procedural, and not a bad one. It’s just not going to have the thrills a horror audience might expect.
This is a good film, and one worth seeing. I say that, though, as someone who seems to enjoy Spanish-style horror in terms of the darker variety of European delights, so take that with a small grain of salt.
Why to watch The Nameless: It’s a dandy idea for a thriller.
Why not to watch: It’s the slowest of slow burns.
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