THE debut solo feature by Argentinian director Martín Mauregui, Crazy Old Lady is a Spanish psychological horror about an agile pensioner with a weakness for hot pokers and electric cleavers.
Eighty-year-old Alicia, brilliantly played by Carmen Maura, who starred in Pedro Almodovar’s classic Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, is having a King Lear/Baby Jane dark night of the soul. The dementia-fuelled squall inside her head and the tempest blowing up around her shadowy and dilapidated mansion leaves her vulnerable, confused, and preyed upon by monsters from her past.
A red flag is raised for Alicia’s daughter Laura (Agustina Liendo) and she begins to fret about her mother’s cognitive state when she receives a number of erratic phone calls while on a road-trip with her young daughter Elena (Emma Cetrángolo). Unable to reach the live-in caretaker, and fearful of a baking disaster of house-burning proportions, Alicia is left with no alternative but to ask for a “once in a lifetime” favour from her former partner Pedro (Daniel Hendler).
However, Pedro’s arrival quickly takes a dark and disastrous turn when he runs over Alicia’s beloved pooch, and has to get rid of the evidence, before he can finally tend to the octogenarian damsel in distress. Alicia then quickly confuses Pedro for former husband César, and the gruesome games get underway when she knocks him over the head and chains him up for some light sado-masochistic torture trials.
She’s convinced Pedro is César, a dark and brutal force that subject her to all kinds of warped torment before ultimately breaking her heart while the bodies piled up after their twisted tryst. Thirty for revenge, and keen to put an end to the black hole of emptiness that has plagued her, Pedro is in for a night to remember as she quizzes him about their once sordid past.
One thing is for sure – there will be no Horlicks for anyone until Alicia gets her retribution and Pedro is missing a few digits.
This is a deliciously twisted black comedy that will leave you with your mouth hanging. Don’t mess with those old folks!
(4/5)