Mario Casas is an actor from Spain. I hadn't really heard about him until a couple of years ago, but he was an actor who had basically been discovered by Antonio Banderas, the most famous and well-regarded Spanish actor on Earth. Casas' feature debut was in the Banderas directed,
Summer Rain (2006). Casas worked steadily for a decade, doing a couple of Spanish TV series. He even had roles in one of the highest-grossing films in Spain. Things kept going up for him starting five years ago when he appeared in his first English-language film
Eden (2015). That same year, he worked with Banderas again in
The 33 (2015), the true story about the Chilean miners stuck underground. Since then, Casas has been very, very busy. He's starred in eight features in less than four years. All of which are available on Netflix. Of those eight, two of which came out this year, including this one. Yet, he has a third film in the can that will probably be available soon. As a result, he has become one of the top five male actors from Spain, behind Banderas, Javier Bardem, Mark Consuelos and Jordi Mollà. Comparatively speaking, Casas is like Spain's version of Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth and Chris Pine, all rolled up into one.
Even though I saw The 33, I didn't catch on to who Casas was. He didn't really enter my radar until I saw The Invisible Guest (Contratiempo) (2017). That film was a dark thriller, a crime drama that follows a police investigation after a terrible act was committed and how the consequences are handled. This film, directed and co-written by Carles Torras, is about the lead up to a terrible act and what might drive a man to commit the act in the first place. In this case, the terrible act is stalking and kidnapping. There are escalations, but stalking and kidnapping are at the core of what occurs. A man stalks and kidnaps a woman.
Ever since
Cape Fear (1962) and
The Collector (1965), there have been a wealth of films about stalking and kidnapping, particularly men who go after women in order to force or compel them to be with them romantically, if not just sexually. Pedro Almodovar's
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! (1989) is one such example, which again is a Spanish film featuring Banderas. Looking back at a film like that one, which could be described as Stockholm Syndrome, it could be considered quite problematic, as it romanticizes or makes erotic the idea of men committing violence or crimes against women. Even films like
Beauty and the Beast (1991) seem very problematic in that regard, looking at it now. That film was remade in 2017 and recently the Polish film
365 Days (2020) was released, which underscore how these problematic depictions are still in the works.
Torras' film doesn't take the same tone as those problematic films. This film leans into the horror genre. The film makes it clear that the man committing the violence and crimes toward the woman is not a man to be romanticized or even eroticized. That's baseline though. It wouldn't be enough to make this film rise above what are tons of stalking and kidnapping films. Nowadays, the film has to have a narrative hook that leans more on the bizarre or maybe supernatural. Films like 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016) or Split (2017) have those supernatural hooks. This film doesn't have a supernatural hook. Its hook is having its stalker and kidnapper or villain essentially be disabled.
Casas plays Ángel Hernandez, an emergency medical technician (EMT) or a paramedic in Barcelona. He has an apartment and lives with his girlfriend, Vanesa or Vane, played by Déborah François. He's a bit of a kleptomaniac. He's trying to have a baby with his girlfriend. Yet, they aren't married and don't seem to have plans to get married. They just seem to be trying to have a baby. It's very progressive and modern of them to think they can have a baby without the institution of marriage, but if they're actively trying to conceive rather than just have recreational sex, then it simply seems odd. All of that changes when Ángel is paralyzed from the waist-down, becoming a paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair.
His relationship with Vane begins to deteriorate, as his paranoia rises. Vane works at a call center, but she aspires to be a veterinarian. Her time away and her desire to advance her career are distancing them and Ángel doesn't like it. His frustrations about his condition, as well as microaggressions that result, cause him to build more psychotic urges and actions until he's prime to go to the same place that Banderas' character goes in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!. However, the question becomes how he accomplishes taking a woman hostage and holding her prisoner while he's confined to a wheelchair. Even though it's disturbing, it's also a bit clever how he manages to do it.
However, that cleverness can only come at a suspension of disbelief. After Ángel is paralyzed, we don't see much in the way of family or friends who would be in his life, supporting him. The only person we see is Vane. That can be excused because it's assumed that Ángel is pushing people away and isolating himself. When Vane is kidnapped, we don't see much of her friends and family or those more connected to her looking for her. Guillermo Pfening plays Ricardo, arguably a more connected person who would look for Vane. Yet, a series of dominoes start to fall where multiple people start to disappear along with Vane that it begins to strain credulity that Ángel's cleverness would be successful, even if his immediate actions were successful.
It wants to end with Vane rescuing herself and fighting back. In that, its climactic scene, that of the penultimate scene, is itself clever, as we get an unlikely action scene, involving a disabled person. Casas isn't disabled in real-life, so it's not as thrilling as having an actual disabled person in that scene, but again the scene is clever in its execution. I would recommend the film for that scene alone, to show the power of disabled people and how they are capable of a lot, even fighting, despite whatever physical limitations they might have.
What muddles the film is the very last scene and very last moment. It could be read as retribution against the stalker and kidnapper. It could also be read as the stalker and kidnapper still getting what he wanted, as Vane could still be seen as a prisoner of Ángel. She might not be physically confined by the end, but she's still very much beholden to him, which to me is still as problematic as the ending of
Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!.
Rated TV-MA.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 34 mins.
Available on Netflix.
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