The movie tells the story of a night in the life of Alicia (García Jonsson), a civil inspector, responsible for the state of preservation of home buildings in urban areas. One afternoon, after one routine inspection, she accidentally grabs the keys of an abandoned apartment, and decides to keep it for the weekend, as she sees the location as the perfect place for a surprise party, to celebrate her boyfriend’s birthday.
After blindfolding her boyfriend Simon (Sevilla), she leads both to the unsuspected location for a romantic night, as a couple, in the abandoned apartment. After a good start, they discuss, and after separating just for a little while, Alicia notices there are more people in the place, which – with the possible exception of one old man who refuses to leave, whose apartment was inspected by her earlier that day – should be empty.
After being noticed, Alicia is successful in escaping the criminals, but her boyfriend doesn’t have the same luck. After a fight ensues, he manages to escape, just to be caught and stabbed by one of the assailants. When Alicia by chance locates her boyfriend, she manages to help him, and he successfully kills his offender. When both reduce the entire gang to simply one man, they think that escaping alive would be easy, but when reinforcement arrives in the person of one professional sadistic killer, things become really terrifying for the couple, especially when she uncovers the fact that this men were probably all hired by the real state agency, to kill the few remaining residents of the building – mostly aged and solitary people – to demolish the structure, and build a whole new set of luxury and expensive flats.
With great moments from the very beginning to the last final seconds, Sweet Home is a terrific movie, with absolutely no faults at all! Great acting, dramatic moments, agonizing tensions, fearful scenes, afflictive downturns and an amazing soundtrack are all greatly combined, working splendidly altogether, with the final result being this fantastic and superb masterpiece.
The script, decent, cohesive, well-structured, realistic and abrasive, it is beyond convincing: its dark undertones are extremely grounded in real possibilities, with the timing and the correct unrolling of events being a major highlight, completely favorable to the plot, having an almost perfect mathematical set of sequences.
There are no complaints about this movie. With excellent actors doing their best, an impeccable set of technical proficiency – with special mentions to its refined cinematography and a very lucid photography, responsible for its bright artistic visuals – terrifying scenario, correct timing and pace, everything possible in this movie is beyond compliment; in fact, all compliments in the world still wouldn’t do justice to the professional level of artistic excellence this movie easily achieves.
With a great history of filmmaking, Spain rarely gives us bad movies. Fortunately for us, this artistic legacy continues to this day. With such a groundbreaking excellence, having executed brightly such a common concept, Sweet Home is a first class movie that certainly deserves one hundred stars, or more, but since I can give to it only five, it is five stars indeed. But it remains being just a few, since it deserves a lot more.
Wagner