Barcelona Underground
by Hope Madden
Subways can be very scary places. An American Werewolf in London knew it. Del Toro’s Mimic. Midnight Meat Train. Jacob’s Ladder. A Quiet Place: Day One. These films amplified the claustrophobic subterranean atmosphere for all its hellscape potential.
Luis Prieto’s Barcelona Underground (also variously called Last Stop: Rocafort St. and Rocafort Station) tries to tap into that mass transit terror. Laura (Natalia Azahara) has a new job manning the Rocafort stop on Barcelona’s subway system, which is legendary for its suicides. Three of every four subway suicides in the city take place at the Rocafort Street stop.
It all started back when Román (Javier Gutiérrez) was still a cop. He followed serial killer Elías Soro through the labyrinthine tunnels but wasn’t quick enough to save the family of four Soro had taken hostage.
Were they suicides? They were not. How is this connected to the suicides? And why is Laura haunted by hallucinations ever since she witnessed one? Who knows, honestly? I sat through the whole movie and feel confident in saying that Prieto never truly connects the folklore, exorcism, and police procedural threads to even begin to make sense of this plot.
Worse, he doesn’t capitalize on the horrific possibilities available in a subway tunnel.
Barcelona Underground is a hodgepodge of obvious cliches and worn-out tropes slapped together with nonsensical panache. Each piece is incredibly familiar, but not one fits snugly in place beside the next piece. It’s as if Prieto, writing with Ivan Ledesma and Ángel Agudo, lifted the most cliched scene from a dozen films and taped them together, hoping to create a single tale.
None of it works because none of it makes sense. Both Azahara and Gutiérrez do what they can with poorly written roles, but the senseless mishmash of a story arc keeps either from crafting a recognizable character.
Plus, it’s not scary.
An American Werewolf in London is scary, though. Do with that information what you will.
