30 MONEDAS / KATLA

And now, for those of you who may want a viewing commitment more substantial than just a 2 hour-or-so movie (and don’t consider the reading of subtitles an annoyance), this pair of foreign-language TV horror shows get a couple of hearty ¡Qué horror! recommendations.

30 MONEDAS

(30 COINS)

Season 1

(November 2020)

“Do you know the best way to conceal a lie? Inventing a much bigger one.”

“That’s true. It’s par for the course in politics.”

Álex de la Iglesia serves up some pulpy religious horror with 30 Monedas, which, as indicated by its title, has the very coins which were the price of Jesus’ betrayal as the series’ centerpiece.

“We all have something we can’t manage to forget, don’t we, Father? With the Internet, there are no secrets anymore.”

“That really is an invention of the Devil.”

And while the practical make-up/creature effects are much appreciated by yours truly (the huge CGI set piece, not so much), thankfully it isn’t all po-faced horror here.

Fleeting moments of comic lightness stem organically from characters and their interactions with each other so the proceedings don’t inadvertently suffocate us with constant terror-induced anxiety.

“There is a much deeper horror. We live in the midst of a hurricane of lies and deceit. There are no truths, only a furious instinct of destruction and madness, provoked by your God.  I don’t know for what reason. Maybe it’s just for the pleasure of making you suffer.”

And then, for a change of pace…

Strip away the Biblical MacGuffins and the cause-and-effect plot mechanics, swap in a grey ash-laden mood and bleakly creepy atmosphere and a tighter focus on character and emotion, and we have…

KATLA Season 1

(June 2021)

“If you ask me, nothing here seems normal anymore. I know that you scientists don’t believe things unless it can be measured with your fancy equipment, but I can tell you that something is happening that science can unfortunately not explain.”

The eponymous Katla has been in a state of volcanic unrest for a year now, and the small Icelandic community of Vik is all but a ghost town, with most of its inhabitants evacuated, and the remaining few simply “trying to survive.”

But, as if that weren’t already bad enough, some undeniably weird sh!t belatedly hits the fan…

This one revels in its central mystery, one of dread and anticipation, as we (and the forcibly dwindled population of Vik) bear witness to the impossible and inexplicable return of individuals who really shouldn’t be among us, at least, not in the manner in which they’ve returned.

And with that sentence, it should come as no surprise that there are echoes of Les Revenants in Katla, as everyday lives are impacted by the reintroduction of… well… not the dead, exactly, as in Les Revenants*, but certainly, of individuals whose very presence flies in the face of everything we know about existence.

To its credit, Katla doesn’t overly prolong the “Why?” of its mystery.

By its final, eighth episode, it’s made clear why this is all happening. Mileage may vary, however, as to whether any particular audience member will accept the explanations, given how everything shakes out in the end.

At the very least, answers are offered, while leaving matters open for any potential follow-up season.

“Nature regularly reminds us how small we are. How everything we’ve got depends on it.”

* Though there are apparently some of those.

And hey! Lookit! There’s a creepy kid here, too!

(30 Monedas key art courtesy of impawards.com; Katla key art courtesy of twitter.com.)