LA HERENCIA VALDEMAR II: LA SOMBRA PROHIBIDA

LA HERENCIA VALDEMAR II: LA SOMBRA PROHIBIDA
(THE VALDEMAR LEGACY II: THE FORBIDDEN SHADOW) (2010)
ES
Directed by Jose Luis Aleman

CAST:
Silvia Abascal - Luisa Lorente
Oscar Jaenada - Nicolas Tremel
Daniele Liotti - Lazaro Valdemar

PLOT:
     The conclusion of the Valdemar story as all the players are brought together to finish the Dunwich Ritual that was started but left unfinished.

REVIEW:
     So for all those that stayed with me throughout this month, know I went through a lot of movies, much more than I'm used to writing about in a month. Yet here it is the toward the end  of August and I'm putting up the review for La Herencia Valdemar II which is the movie that made me decide to do all Mythos movies this month due to that Cthulhu is summoned toward the end of the film. While some of the movies I reviewed were movies where the filmmakers based the story around the Mythos, others understood the source material much more than others. While these movies weren't from stories of Lovecraft himself, they just had that something extra that was needed to make you believe they were done as a love letter to the dead writer for giving them and us a wonderful look at a world where things are hidden that should stay hidden but see the light of day, where if you find a copy of the Necronomicon it's best just to leave town as shown multiple times over the month. And where someone wants a person in a cult to raise one of the Elder Gods, including Cthulhu itself, we get to see the mayhem that happens from said summoning. It's from these stories the movies are based upon that give us so much fun as well as groans. So, on with the review!

     What the fuck went wrong? The first movie is a wonderfully tight bit of storytelling that has heart at it's center. This one just left that heart crushed on the floor and forgotten. The story races forward leaving all returning character development in the dust while trying to bring in new characters that show up out of nowhere yet are supposed to be major players in the movie but after only minutes these same important characters are put into a trunk or disappear suddenly only to show up for fractions of a second later. The story also makes you scratch your head with sub-plots that try to bridge the two movies together that makes no sense in the slightest as it seems they scriptwriter wrote himself into a corner and couldn't think of a better way to move the plot along.

     The acting thankfully is decent throughout the movie except for Eusebio Poncela who just seems like he really doesn't want to be there and shows it by being nonchalant  while looking bored out of his mind. He's supposed to be the ringleader of a cult but yet has no charisma whatsoever. Oscar Jaenada does probably the best job out of everyone in the cast with what they were all giving, trying to bring a sense of believability to all the thrown around plots that go nowhere. A good example of this is Jaenada's character Nicolas Tramel's involvement in a attempt to extort money from the company that hired him. Oh, and he is some how connected to the dead fat guy that was in the first movie. The one character I was surprised to see was a character based of H. P. Lovecraft himself, played by Luis Zahera, who is almost a dead ringer for him except for a couple of extra pounds, which was a nice touch in and of itself. Even though the character is in the for only about four minutes, he basically tells what will happen at the end of the movie, fortunately not in great detail though.

     After what was built up in the first film, this movie takes a easy approach and winds up hurting itself trying to put to much information in at the last second. Another complaint that has to be mentioned is how is giant alter over a cliff missed by the property appraisers when it was obviously built at least 10 years ago in the movie and as far as I could tell the 'Estate' isn't thousands of feet above the ocean. One thing this movie does do right though is the final monster, Cthulhu itself. It seems like every bit of money that was allotted for the movie was spent on it as it is just amazing to see in motion, as it is one of the best CG monsters I have seen in a long time. To bad that is the one shining point in this film, well that are the threat of another movie in this series which hopefully will not happen. If you the viewers have to watch the film just skip to about 30 minutes before the end and everything is good from that point on, but still doesn't kill the pain that happens before though. And to reiterate, the best part of this movie was Cthulhu!

BEST DEATH:
     The Valdemar's rapid aging together.

BEST LINE:
     No man can bear gazing upon our Lords without first going insane.

FUN FACTS:
     Oscar Jaenada's character is named Nicolas Tramel. The name is a little variation of Nicholas Flamel (1330-1413), one of the biggest alchemists in entire history.

     The first movie in all Spanish's cinema history made without Spanish government subsidies.

     The movie isn't exactly a sequel, but the rest of the story untold in the previous part, following the tradition of others titles like Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Kill Bill Vol. 2 as well as the Matrix Saga.

     The creature raised during the first invocation is a ghoul (or gul), an evil creature liked-zombie that it was mentioned in a short horror tale from Mythos of Cthulhu, "The Pickman's Model" (1927).

    As a bonus, one more picture of the cool as hell looking Cthulhu!