Paranormal Xperience   Starring: Amaia Salamanca, Maxi Iglesias and Lucho Fernández Distributor: Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment RRP: £15.99 KAL8278 Certificate: 18 Release Date: 24 February 2014

A group of failing psychology students is subjected to an intense experiment by their professor, as an example of how fear works. He tells a female student afterwards about the legend of a torturer and killer who was eventually tracked down and dispatched underground in a small mining town. The town is long-since deserted, but it is said people are still going missing and being found mutilated. The professor suggests she checks out the legend and brings back something which will convince him she is on the right course. The whole group arranges to go, but the girl brings along her younger sister, because she has a van to hold them and their equipment. But her sister has issues which date back to her young childhood. Hypnotising her to make her more susceptible to the legend has an extraordinary effect, as she witnesses a couple of brutal attacks which nobody else sees. But are they real, or the illusions of a deeply troubled psyche...

I’m glad I was sent the DVD version of this film, as I’m not fan of 3-D. Sergi Vizcaino directs a subtitled film which initially is difficult to keep up with, because the dialogue comes so thick and fast. It gives the impression the lines are simply being shouted out, rather than any consideration being given to character thought and hesitation. It calms down a little when the group reaches the mining town and sets up camp in the church. There are some subsequent cheap visual tricks aimed entirely at the 3-D audience.

I’m keen on psychological horror, so I had some high hopes for Paranormal Xperience. It’s made by the producers of The Orphanage and Julia’s Eyes, both of which were pretty good films. However, there’s nothing whatsoever original in the theme, plot or characters. The psychological aspect of whether events are real or not has been done to death by now. The story of teens going looking for a scare, getting out of their depth and ending up just trying to survive, is well over the border into yawn territory. As for the killer: it seems more important to create an image which can be exploited by the film company as a possible franchise, than it does to create a proper and believable background and motive for his actions.

I must say, although I’ve seen many films far worse, this one does little for me, and achieves nothing inspiring for the horror film industry in general.

5

Ty Power