THE HOUSE AT THE END OF TIME (2013 - Spanish)

Studio:       Dark Sky Films
Director:    Alejandro Hidalgo
Writer:       Alejandro Hidalgo
Producer:  Alejandro Hidalgo
Stars:     Ruddy Rodriguez, Gonzalo Cubero, Rosmel Bustamante, Guillermo Garcia, Hector Mercado, Alexander Da Silva, Amanda Key

Review Score:

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Summary:

30 years after her husband’s death, the woman convicted of the crime returns to the mysterious house where the murder took place to find out what really happened.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

November 1981 – Dulce Alida wakes from unconsciousness with her face slashed. Surrounded by broken mirror shards, Dulce picks herself up off the floor of her home and begins searching for her son Leopoldo. Dulce finds her husband Juan Jose Hernandez murdered. She finally finds Leopoldo, but before he can walk toward her, the boy is suddenly pulled into the dark stairway behind him, which leads to an underground chamber. Dulce searches the chamber, but finds no sign of Leopoldo.

Dulce is arrested for murder and sentenced to prison.

30 Years Later – November 2011 – Now an elderly woman, Dulce is permitted to return to her former home under police supervision. A priest comes to see Dulce. He tells her he does not believe she is guilty and asks what really happened. Dulce takes the priest to the underground chamber. She claims that the house killed her husband, and that even though the knife had her fingerprints on it, she never touched it.

1981 – Leopoldo and his little brother Rodrigo are scolded for coming home late after a day of playing baseball and neighborhood pranks with their friends. Dulce still gifts Leopoldo with a pearl as a keepsake reminder of her.

With their marriage already troubled, Dulce and her husband argue when Juan Jose comes home late. Juan Jose leaves, prompting Dulce to lock the door behind him. Inexplicably, someone else rattles Dulce’s bedroom door. Dulce opens the door partway and is grabbed by an unknown hand.

Rodrigo hides under a sheet when someone rattles his bedroom doorknob too. Rodrigo screams when a silhouette removes his sheet. Dulce eventually gets to the boy and asks what happened. Rodrigo claims it was only Leopoldo scaring him.

The police question the family about the unknown intruders. Leopoldo refuses to say anything about what he saw.

Later, Leopoldo admits to Dulce that he saw a woman who warned him to not play with Rodrigo for three days. He also passes Dulce a scrap of paper that the woman told him to give to her. The paper reads, “Juan Jose will kill your son.”

2011 – The priest privately researches the history of Dulce’s house. He discovers it was built in 1890 by Irahim Eckhart, a Mason who insisted on that site for construction. The priest additionally learns that Eckhart’s family disappeared one by one in 1921. The government took over the property as a rental for underprivileged families, though another family disappeared there in 1951. The priest later relays this info to Dulce.

Meanwhile, elderly Dulce is tormented in the house by a vision of an old man with a knife. Dulce also finds the number 11 written in blood six times on a mirror before the policemen posted outside respond to her screams.

1981 – Dulce tells Juan Jose that there is something evil in the house while trying to convince him that the two boys should not play together. She also shows Juan Jose what the paper said.

Dulce tells Juan Jose that she has wanted a divorce for some time and plans to leave with the kids. Juan Jose gets physical while threatening that Dulce will never see the children again if she tries to leave him.

Leopoldo spies on Rodrigo as he gifts their mother’s pearl to Sarai, a girl Rodrigo has a crush on. Leopoldo pulls his little brother away from Sarai to play baseball with other friends.

Dulce has blind psychic Victoria and her sister Adriana come to the house for a séance. Victoria enters a trance in which she speaks as both Juan Jose and Leopoldo. In Victoria’s voice, Juan Jose seemingly prepares to kill Leopoldo while claiming that Rodrigo was his only son. Dulce shakes Victoria out of her trance by screaming after seeing a vision of the old man.

With Rodrigo pitching, Leopoldo hits a baseball back into his brother’s face, accidentally killing Rodrigo. At Rodrigo’s funeral, Leopoldo tells his friend Mario that he is his only brother now. Leopoldo and Mario share a secret handshake.

2011 – The priest deduces that the six elevens written on the mirror indicate 11:11 and 11 seconds on November 11, 2011, which is the current date. The priest gives Dulce a cross and tells her she needs to hold on for one more day.

1981 – Juan Jose finds an old love letter hidden under the bed indicating that another man, who died of a rare disease, is actually Leopoldo’s father.

2011 – Dulce explores the house at 11:11:11. She reaches through a chain-locked bedroom door, becoming the unknown hand grabbing at young Dulce in 1981. At the same time in 1981, Leopoldo is temporarily transported back several days to before his brother’s death, becoming the silhouette that grabs the sheet off of Rodrigo.

Old Dulce encounters pre-funeral Leopoldo in 1981, becoming the woman who warns him to not play with Rodrigo and who gives him the paper intended for her younger self. Meanwhile, post-funeral Leopoldo gives Rodrigo the pearl that their mother gifted to him.

Juan Jose confronts post-funeral Leopoldo. Juan Jose tells the boy that he is not his father and prepares to attack with a knife. Young Dulce interrupts. Juan Jose confronts his wife with the truth about Leopoldo’s parentage. Juan Jose slashes young Dulce’s face and knocks her unconscious by throwing her into a mirror. Juan Jose starts chasing Leopoldo with a knife.

Old Dulce follows a vision of the old man with a knife into the underground chamber. The old man explains that he is Leopoldo from the year 2071. He goes on to say that Dulce saved him in 1981. Old Leopoldo gives old Dulce his knife and tells her that the only way to make sure he lives is to kill Juan Jose.

Old Dulce asks if it is possible to save Rodrigo. Old Leopoldo explains that the house chooses where to send people and its powers cannot be manipulated. He then explains that he has the same disease that killed his real father, for which there is no treatment in 1981. Before vanishing, old Leopoldo tells old Dulce that he can only be cured in the future.

Old Dulce stabs Juan Jose to death. She then explains to post-funeral Leopoldo that she has to leave and begins retreating down the staircase into the underground chamber.

Young Dulce finds Leopoldo. As the boy begins walking toward his younger mother, old Dulce recalls old Leopoldo’s claim that he can only be cured in the future. Old Dulce goes back up the stairs, snatches young Leopoldo, and brings him back to 2011.

Mario and Sarai watch with other onlookers from behind a fence as young Dulce is escorted from the house in police custody.

2011 – Old Dulce asks the priest if God can forgive her for everything she did. She then presents young Leopoldo to him. The priest greets Leopoldo with the secret handshake from childhood, revealing that he is actually Mario as an adult.

Mario gets Leopoldo past the police posted outside. Mario brings young Leopoldo to adult Sarai, now wearing the pearl Rodrigo gave her as a necklace, who agrees to adopt Leopoldo.

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Review:

30 years have passed since Dulce woke from unconsciousness with a bloody slash on her face and broken mirror shards all over her floor.  Dulce recovered to find her husband stabbed to death before watching helplessly as her son Leopoldo was pulled into darkness by unknown hands.

Dulce swears she never touched the murder weapon, although the knife handle had her prints, and Leopoldo’s body was never found.  Nevertheless, Dulce went to prison for the crimes and has been there ever since.

Now an elderly woman, authorities are allowing Dulce to revisit the haunted old home where the horrors took place.  As flashbacks flood back, a priest pays a house call to ask what really happened to Dulce’s family on that fateful night 30 years ago.  Additionally aided by a blind psychic straight out of “Phantasm,” a shocking mystery is put together that doesn’t have Dulce at its center.  Rather, it seems her strange house casts a supernatural spell capable of transcending time itself.

Horror cinema has as many haunted house ghost stories as the beach has grains of sand.  But slow burn suspense yarn “The House at the End of Time,” or “The House of the End Times” depending on how literally one wishes to translate the Spanish title, sparkles brighter than its dime-a-dozen peers by being built with sincere sentimentality, not just spookshow scares.  Matching a free flow of fear with relatable family drama, “The House at the End of Time” makes for a movie that is emotionally engaging as well as subtly chilling.

Former Miss Venezuela World and popular telenovela actress Ruddy Rodriguez plays Dulce on two timelines.  Rodriguez’s portrayal of a devoted, yet unfortunately struggling mother runs a full range between heartstring-tugging and outright heartbreaking.  The young actors playing her children follow Rodriguez’s exemplary lead for roles effectively alternating between charming and crushing.

Director Alejandro Hidalgo wrings every grimace, scream, and tear he can from his cast as they explore all available avenues to ensure a willing audience can connect with these characters.  “The House at the End of Time” is a story about people, specifically fragile family bonds, and the movie never forgets to ground the “natural” before putting “super” in front of it.

Unquestionably, the movie’s single greatest faux pas is the awful old age makeup used for elderly Dulce.  Execution is so poor, the makeup would earn its artist a week one boot and pinched nose from Glenn Hetrick if this were a “Face Off” spotlight challenge.

It’s a nagging disappointment that this mildly mars a production otherwise polished to near perfection for a crafty indie effort.  Such a setback also distracts from Ruddy Rodriguez’s performance, although Rodriguez is partly to blame for playing elderly Dulce as though she is in her late nineties instead of her late sixties.  Rodriguez seemingly took a white wig and wrinkles as carte blanche to act almost crippled.

“The House at the End of Time” requires viewers to let certain things go anyway.  Should you look behind you once all the surprise reveals are in the open, you’ll easily see that the logic isn’t entirely level.  (I’ll never understand how a ghost capable of writing cryptic numbers as a message in a mirror can’t write specific words and save everyone a lot of trouble.)

Of course, if you’re unwilling to hang disbelief at the door on your way into the story, you’ll miss out on the magic of the movie’s cinematic fantasy and moving mystery.  For a film founded on shocking moments occurring on two concurrent plotlines, “The House at the End of Time” is relatively easy to follow as far as time twisters go.  Loud bangs on doors and shadowy shapes grabbing at shoulders check more than one jump jolt box, so it isn’t all just cerebral suspense.  Yet the head and the heart are where the film intelligently grabs with a creatively firm grip.

NOTE: The film’s Spanish title is “La casa del fin de los tiempos.”

Review Score:  80

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