Carlos Marbán’s body horror Heiressess puts a spin on Pet Sematary and Re-Animator but can’t inject life into a lethargic, messy story.
The Spanish movie starts strong, as a family is ripped apart by a fatal accident that claims the life of the patriarch (Jordi Rubio), leaving the mother (Anna Coll Miller) and daughter (Alma J. Cerezo) to deal with the aftermath of it. The deceased had a few secrets that were unearthed after he was in his grave. Mostly, ones that make life difficult for an already grieving widow and teenager, but the revelation of his clandestine work on a serum that could reanimate a dead body is what will most significantly impact the story in the future.
On the positive side, Heiresses doesn’t take the easy route with that setup, swerving away from expectation and offering up the opportunity for a refreshing spin on the aforementioned ”back from the dead” story with a blunt, shocking moment and understandable reaction that naturally has long-term consequences.
But at under 80 minutes, Heiresses doesn’t make good use of the time it has to set this up properly. For too much of the movie’s runtime the pace is meandering, banal, and plagued by horrendous translations of the Spanish dialogue in the subtitles.
Now, if the pace and heavy reliance on dialogue dovetailed with the shock-horror side a bit more fluidly, it would actually be an invigorating concoction that elevated the movie. Instead, the cast has to wade through awkward, clunky scenes on the way to a promise of a worthwhile payoff.
The pace is best in the opening and closing of the film, but the middle feels like a cautious decision to pad the runtime and load up the finale with all the grisly stuff. It’s a decision that is to the detriment of the film because by the time things really got going, I felt somewhat detached from the experience.
In that bloated middle section, the easiest solution would have been to slap more onto the interesting parts left with too little screen time by shaving large hunks off the rest. There’s a pivoting back-and-forth segment in the middle of Heiresses where the dread and tension earned in the early going fizzles out because too much time is spent on the inane conversation going on in the aftermath of an as-yet-unseen catastrophe. Again, it could work with the right balance, but time and again, the film suffers from messy pacing and needless lingering of focus on things that do nothing for a sub-90-minute picture.
When the brutal and blood-splattered finale does arrive, it feels excessively bleak and, dare I say, unearned. There’s no doubt that the violence carries some weight, and that’s mainly because grief and guilt are a big part of the film’s narrative. So why not leave some of that guilt and grief on the table?
If Heiresses weren’t so overcooked in the places it is, it certainly wouldn’t feel as undercooked elsewhere. Save for a few fleeting moments, the film struggles to find the right spot for what it’s trying to achieve. The result is a largely dreary and irritating body horror movie that wastes its brief runtime.
Score: 3/10
As ComingSoon’s review policy explains, a score of 3 equates to ”Bad”. Due to significant issues, this media feels like a chore to take in.
Heiresses screened as part of Panic Fest 2024.
