La casa del fin de los tiempos (2013)

Directed by Alejandro Hidalgo [Other horror films: The Exorcism of God (2021)]

This film blew me away. La casa del fin de los tiempos, better known to the English tongue as The House at the End of Time, is not only one of the best time-related horror films I’ve seen, but also among one of the best films I’ve seen.

I expected the film to be good, to be sure. That’s why I went out of my way to watch it. What I didn’t expect was to love the film, and that’s what happened. The story here is quite tragic, and quite beautiful, and has so much going for it. It’s a movie with pure feeling, and I won’t lie, I did tear up during the final ten minutes.

Horror movies aren’t often an emotional experience for me, at least not to the extent this one was. To add to the surprise, I’ve never even seen a film from Venezuela before, so the fact that this one worked to such a superb extent amazed me. What’s even more is that most time-related horror films aren’t great – I know Triangle has it’s fans, but I’m definitely not one of them, and while Timecrimes is okay, I ultimately think it falls around average. Happy Death Day is solid fun, but it’s not much more. The House at the End of Time, however, is on another level.

There’s a drama/fantasy/crime/mystery movie from 2000 called Frequency. That’s the best comparison I can come up with, because much like that movie, The House at the End of Time is an emotional ride, it’s time aspects all make sense and are consistent throughout, and the film can be quite moving at times. There are small twists throughout, and there was one at the end that just got me (it wasn’t necessarily a twist if you were paying close attention, but I suspect like myself, many people wouldn’t be), which was masterfully done.

In fact, the whole movie could be described as masterful. I’ll admit, when I began the film, and it looked like it started in media res, I cringed. I don’t mean internally – I mean, I actually physically cringed. But that’s not what this film did – from the opening, it jumps thirty years, and throughout the film, we get a good smattering of present-day material with material from thirty years previous, and sometimes a bit of both. The narrative structure of the film was amazing. Just amazing.

Everyone made this movie work. Ruddy Rodríguez was amazing. As brothers, Rosmel Bustamante and Héctor Mercado were amazing. Guillermo Garcia looked damn beast, and he was amazing. Gonzalo Cubero, well, need I say it? His character was a tragic one, and the actor did fantastically.

While there is violence in the film, that’s not at all the focus nor import here. It’s more an emotional ride, and some of the more violent scenes, such as one involving a game of baseball among children, also pack an emotional punch. That baseball scene in particular was fantastically-shot, and there are scenes toward the finale that also whisper of magnificence.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I started The House at the End of Time. I was expecting a good movie, but I was not expecting an amazing movie, and this one blew me away in ways I hope it will continue to do in the future. This isn’t going to be a movie for everyone, but it couldn’t have been better in my eyes.

10/10