Fantasia 2012 - Memory of the Dead (La Memoria Del Muerto)

Written by Martín Blousson, Valentín Javier Diment, Nicanor Loreti, Germán Val
Cast Lola Berthet, Horacio Acosta, Raquel Albéniz, Jimena Anganuzzi

Memory of the Dead is a very unique film that I got the chance to see at Fantasia; it is filled with love, death, friendship, ghosts, more death and lots of blood. This film is very low budget and uses a lot of special effects to please horror lovers with a bloody and beautiful twisted plot.

Alicia (Lola Berthet) has just lost her husband Jorge, and is deeply hurt by his sudden death; she gathers all of his friends who loved him to their house to read his last letter he wrote to them but Alicia has another plan in mind, a pretty fucked up plan to kill everyone and sacrifice their souls to bring Jorge back! Something starts happening within the mysterious fog that has engulfed her property, the ghosts of her guest’s past are appearing and terrorizing her guests with gruesome imagery and some very uncomfortable situations.

The make-up and special effects are very good and very gross, causing the audience at Fantasia to re-act with sounds of disgust and admiration. The crowd was loving it, taking in every scene of ripping eye-balls out of people faces, watching someone sew their eyes and mouth shut, and a lot of stabbing and blood to name a few. The characters were perfectly exaggerated, very crazy and melodramatic.

I saw a lot of homage to horror films, which included a shower scene with a nostalgic feeling from Psycho and even a little Evil Dead. I was very pleased and entertained with this film, we the audience we taken to hell and we saw some pretty disgusting things; we laughed, cringed, yelled, and cheered. I’m glad that Valentín Javier Diment was given the opportunity to have his world premier at Fantasia, he expressed his excitement and it was definitely contagious because as soon as he introduced his film the audience became silent and wide-eyed, waiting for something we could have never been fully prepared for. This film is not for everyone and you should proceed with caution while watching, it will shock you and may seem a little silly but hey! When will you get the chance to experience going to hell and then coming back to the real world? Now you have that chance so take it and watch Memory of the Dead; you will leave the theatre with some new horrifically awesome memories of your own.

- Andrea Boulet
@AndreaMtl