If a single mother who’s just moved into a suspiciously cheap house with her troubled sons should know one thing, it’s Don’t Leave the Kids Alone.
Alas, in Emilio Portes’ diverting new horror, that advice goes notably unheeded. Set some time in the late 70s or early 80s, the film takes place over a single night, primarily in the cavernous new home that Catalina (Ana Serradilla) has recently moved into with her two young sons, Matias (Juan Pablo Velasco) and Emiliano (Ricardo Galina). When the babysitter unexpectedly cancels just as Catalina is due to leave for the night, she makes the decision to leave the two boys on their own. Between their own troubled dynamic, an aggressive dog chained in their garden, and strange occurrences happening in the edge of the frame, the stage is set for a tension-filled night.
The film opens in ominous fashion, with the camera gliding closer and closer to an overturned family station wagon, surrounded by glass and children’s toys. It becomes quickly evident that Mati and Emi’s father was killed in this car accident and that, in the wake of his death, Catalina was able to secure a new house on Elm Street for the family at an auction. From the opening moments it is evident that Mati and Emi don’t have the easiest relationship – the younger, Emi, spends the first few minutes of the film pestering his mother to proclaim him her favourite son. Meanwhile, Catalina bristles when Mati venomously calls his younger brother ‘Looney Emi’ though concedes that he needs to take his medication before she leaves them.
Catalina forgets to make him take his pill before she leaves, distracted by a folder that mysteriously goes missing from her dressing table before reappearing where it was. Amidst the chaos of their unpacked house and the two warring siblings, several little things go unnoticed – things that suggest a presence beyond the three of them, Emi’s beloved turtle Lola, and the dog in the garden. It is an interesting energy to bring to a film like this, as these moments of creepy unease are peppered into a film filled with commotion and high emotions. The boys squabble as endlessly as the aggressive barking emanating from outside, and unsurprisingly once their mother has left the premises, they quickly begin to break every rule she set down before she departed.
The film’s structure is effectively one of spending two thirds of the film loading a broad range of Chekov’s guns and leaving them cocked around the house for the impending mayhem as the finale approaches. The children are tiptoeing around the house like Tom from Tom and Jerry, surrounded by primed mousetraps that will only need a single trigger to start a catastrophic chain reaction. The peg tying the dog in the garden – he was left by the previous owner – seems to loosen; a slightly creepy pizza delivery guy promises to return with their change; while rifling through packing boxes they drop a stack of crockery on the floor, filling it with unavoidable shards; Emi never gets around to taking his pill; they find their father’s old crossbow; they find an old box belonging to the previous owners that contains witchy trinkets and a Ouija board that seems to tell them their father is calling to them. All of this happens as their relationship becomes ever more fraught as they bicker over the TV remote control, who will go down to the kitchen, and who was truly at fault for the accident that killed their father. Martin Boege’s camera constantly roams about the house with them, the energy never being allowed to diminish and a state of calm respite constantly denied.
Across town somewhere, Catalina begins to unravel the history of the home she so willingly bought, and uncovers a dark history of fraud, then murder, then sacrificial black magic. It is fair to say that all of this requires the film to operate at a fair clip and Portes ratchets all of these elements up to 11, frequently turning away from the precipice or wrong-footing the audience and leaving us unsure of exactly who is doing what. There are a lot of things thrown at the wall, but they fairly consistently stick, at least in terms of generating a unceasing tension as we wait for the other shoe to drop. Even when things begin to unravel, there are so many other setups waiting to be paid off that you remain on edge.
Whether all horror audiences will be able to get on board with this high-energy, somewhat anarchic version of a haunted house film is debatable, but it is incredibly effective. Velasco and Galina both perform admirably as the backbiting boys, but it is Serradilla – somehow in tune with the escalating drama at home from miles away – who sells the growing anguish of it all. Whether the darkness engulfing the house on Elm Street emanates from its malevolent history or was brought by its troubled occupants, watching it all play out in Don’t Leave the Kids Alone is thoroughly entertaining.
Director: Emilio Portes
Producers: Emilio Portes, Rodrigo Herranz
Cast: Ana Serradilla, Juan Pablo Velasco, Ricardo Galina, Jesus Zavala, Jose Sefami, Paloma Woolrich, Armando Silva
Screenplay: Alan Maldonado, Emilio Portes
Cinematography: Martin Boege
Editing: Juan Manual Figeroa, Emilio Portes
Production design: Alejandro Garcia
Sound: Mario Martinez
Music: Aldo Max Rodriguez
Production companies: Pastorela Peliculas (Mexico)
Venue: International Film Festival Rotterdam (Harbour)
In Spanish
97 minutes