A junkie horror film director named Jose (Eusebio Poncela) meets his girlfriend’s eccentric cousin Pedro (Will More) who obsessively films everything. He also sends Jose bizarre audio tapes, which makes it sound like he’s slowly going crazy. He then begins to think back to the first time he met Pedro and became fascinated by his experimental and offbeat films. When Pedro mysteriously disappears, Jose watches his last film hoping to get a clue to what happened.
Pedro’s ultimate goal is to send the viewer into “rapture” by showing them seemingly unconnected images that have been sped up and slowed down. Well, while you watch Arrebato (which is Spanish for “Rapture”), you will probably feel anything but rapturous. Even though there is a kernel of an interesting story here, it never really pops. Long portions of the flick play like a hangout movie as the director and his girlfriend laze about getting stoned and listening to Pedro’s tapes. While the ending is OK, it’s a long time coming and the nearly two hour running time doesn’t help matters either.
Although I watched this on Shudder, it isn’t really a horror movie as it is more about obsession. Jose’s black and white film-within-a-film that is seen early on is extremely atmospheric as it looks like a silent movie directed by Rob Zombie. It’s a shame that kind of vibe didn’t carry over into the rest of the movie. Some of Pedro’s offbeat films (which take up more screen time than necessary) are sort of interesting, but they become monotonous after a while.
The film slides back and forth between timelines, characters, and “reel” and “real” life quite often. The goal was to create the hallucinatory sensations Pedro felt while he was in the depths of his madness. It’s only intermittently successful. While it might’ve worked as a short, director Ivan Zulueta just can’t sustain the spell for the entire running time.
The weirdo Pedro gets the best line of the movie when he says, “My whole life was like one big wank without coming!”
AKA: Rapture.
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