Night of the Virgin, The (Fantasia 2017)
Drew Tinnin
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Starring Miriam Martín, Javier Bódalo, Víctor Amilibia
Directed by Roberto San Sebastián
Screened at Fantasia 2017
Roberto San Sebastián’s wonderfully perverse debut feature, The Night of the Virgin (La noche del virgen), certainly isn’t for the squeamish; and it’s definitely not the ideal movie on a first date. Unless, of course, you don’t plan on having a second date. It’s a claustrophobic nightmare scenario that devolves into scenes of bizarre ritualistic violence, leading one poor soul on a sexual revolution he did not sign up for.
Set up like a dark, twisted sitcom, The Night of the Virgin is also insanely graphic in parts. Sebastián puts his leads through the ringer, and his message seems to be that, sometimes, it’s just better to stay at home alone instead of going out cruising for sex.
After a night of rejection, Nico (Bódalo) sees what might be an opportunity to finally rid himself of that humiliating term every guy wants to shake: virgin. He feels like the only sexless twenty-year-old left in the world; and as Medea (Martín) spots him across the room, she thinks she may have finally found a perfect candidate for her specific … needs.
In a classic case of the wrong man in the wrong place, Nico finds himself trapped in Medea’s apartment after an unlucky mixture of perversion and witchcraft leads to a horrible (and rather disgusting) fate for the poor kid. As Medea’s boyfriend, Araña (Amilibia), bangs on the outside door in a blind rage, Nico’s situation seems like it can’t get any worse; but he lacks imagination. Luckily, Sebastían and company do not.
A glorious combination of blood, sperm, and slime sprays the walls and the bodies struggling to survive the night; but the grossness gets easier and easier to swallow, especially when the manic screwball comedy crashes in to ramp up the lunacy. In an attempt to defile the Catholic iconography of the Virgin Mary and transform it into a disgusting horror comedy farce, The Night of the Virgin is fairly bold and brazen for a Spanish genre film.
The grand finale is absolutely worth the investment and is so off-putting and despicably shocking you’ll probably gag. Nico goes from virgin to a sick version of a mother who wants nothing to do with what’s suddenly fighting to come out. Every orifice is taken full advantage of in The Night of the Virgin, and almost every gross-out gag imaginable plays out in some form. It’s like Sebastían was just checking off a list of the most vile things he could think of and splattered them across the screen, purging himself and punishing his characters in the process.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
