Review of Before the Fall

Great photography. Good acting (within the Films very limited range), including that of the kids. It's the best Spanish film I've seen in 2 years. The film is pathetic. In a deserted village 72h before the end of the World, there's fire, a 4 year-old girl plays with a broken and dirty doll…? Wow, we're already in absurd cliché land. But then comes… a man's hand, offering her… a candy. Yes, a candy, can you believe it! Because we are supposed to understand that a few hours before the world ends perverts roam deserted villages in search of 4 year-old girls. Oh dear. Who on earth are those responsible for such Hollywood-influenced narrative stupidities in Spanish films? Maybe the director lives too long in the States; maybe he was seeking to fulfil the necessary dose of superficiality and gratuitous sensationalism in order to secure USA distribution. Is it a thriller? An apocalypse movie? A romance? A horror movie? A child abuser story? It's trying to cover as much territory as possible and manages nothing. Unmotivated and repeated cruelty towards children, child killings (by hanging), child rape, …my God, there is serious narrative prostitution to the service of the easy manipulation of audiences 'fears'. It is inexcusable. Shameless in fact. It seems they complained in the Spanish press that no one went to see the film in Spain, and they had the gall to claim the film was not at all a copycat version of American models. Oh please. This is omitting to detail the enormous gaps in the script, in-credibility (a girl playing the flute under the andalucian summer heat at midday?!), ridiculous coincidences, completely illogical moments (they still have lights after the apocalypse has smashed onto earth?), but all so useful when one wants to avoid having to work over a script. False synthetic music (but OK effects), clichés ad-vomitum, I tried to hold on till the end but... When in the final scenes the unknown 'pretty woman' shows up out of nowhere and for no reason, I just turned the thing off. There is a limit of ridicule that medium intelligent people can bare in one session. There should have been a new edit made of the film, in which 93 minutes was removed.