Sweet Home (2015)
About
A young couple's secret birthday celebration in a near-empty apartment building turns into a fight for survival when they stumble into the middle of a violent plan to clear the last tenant out.
Alicia's job involves inspecting run-down properties, and it has given her the keys to a semi-abandoned apartment block in Barcelona. She decides to use one of its empty flats to throw a surprise birthday dinner for her boyfriend Simón, a romantic night away from their cramped everyday lives.
What neither of them knows is that the company that owns the building wants it empty. The few remaining residents hold old contracts at very low rents that stand in the way of a lucrative renovation, and three hooded men have been hired to get rid of them. The last tenant, the elderly Sr. Ramón, is killed that same night. Once Alicia and Simón witness what is happening they become loose ends, and the company sends a far more methodical killer, known only as El Liquidador, to deal with them. The rest of the film is a claustrophobic night-long game of cat and mouse through the dark corridors and empty flats of the building.
The housing crisis behind the story
Sweet Home is a horror film about eviction. Director Rafa Martínez has said the idea grew out of Spain's housing crisis and his own experience of unemployment and cramped living while he wrote it, and there is nothing supernatural in the film: the threat is a property company that has decided its tenants are worth more gone. Critics picked up on that premise in almost every review, although several felt the social comment is set up in the opening act and then largely dropped once the chase begins.
Cast and characters
Ingrid García Jonsson leads the film as Alicia, and her performance was the element reviewers praised most consistently. Bruno Sevilla plays her boyfriend Simón and José María Blanco plays Sr. Ramón, the last tenant standing in the company's way. Oriol Tarrida plays El Liquidador, the silent professional sent to clean up after the hooded men, who are played by Eduardo Lloveras, Miguel Ángel Alarcón and Luka Peroš. Leticia Dolera has a voice role as the 112 emergency operator Alicia reaches during the night.
Production and release
Sweet Home was Rafa Martínez's first feature, written with Ángel Agudo and Teresa de Rosendo and produced by Julio Fernández for Filmax's Castelao Pictures, as a co-production with the Polish company Film Produkcja and with the participation of the Spanish broadcaster TVE. Before directing it, Martínez had worked in advertising and music videos and cut trailers for films including [REC] 3.
Filming began in July 2014 in a real semi-abandoned building in Barcelona. The film was shot in English with a largely Spanish cast, which is why listings disagree about its original language. It runs 80 minutes. Sweet Home opened in Spanish cinemas on May 8, 2015, where it was rated as not recommended for under-16s, and Vertical Entertainment gave it a limited release in the United States on May 6, 2016.
Details
Director: Rafa Martínez
Writer/Screenplay: Rafa Martínez, Ángel Agudo, Teresa de Rosendo
Producer: Julio Fernández
Running time: 80 minutes
Certificate: Not recommended for under-16s (Spain)
Genre: * Horror
Released: May 8, 2015 (Spain); May 6, 2016 (United States, limited)
Cast
- Ingrid García Jonsson as Alicia
- Bruno Sevilla as Simón
- José María Blanco as Sr. Ramón
- Oriol Tarrida as El Liquidador
- Eduardo Lloveras as Hooded Man 1
- Miguel Ángel Alarcón as Hooded Man 2
- Luka Peroš as Hooded Man 3
- Mariona Perrier as Sra. Carmen
- Eric Masip as Marcus
- Leticia Dolera as 112 Operator (voice)
Related
Trivia
- The film is a Spain and Poland co-production, shot in English in Barcelona with a mostly Spanish cast.
- Director Rafa Martínez previously worked as a trailer editor on films including [REC] 3, and Sweet Home was released by the same company, Filmax.
- The script took more than five years to go from first idea to finished film.
- The film was pre-sold to distributors across Latin America and the Middle East around the time it went into production.
Critical Reception
Reviews were mixed. Most critics agreed that Ingrid García Jonsson gives a strong lead performance and that the empty building makes an effective, claustrophobic setting, and several singled out El Liquidador as a genuinely unsettling villain; Los Interrogantes suggested he had enough presence to carry a franchise of his own.
The script took most of the criticism. Cine Divergente found the film technically accomplished but too indebted to [REC] to leave much impression, A Golpe de Efecto called it predictable and scored it 5.5 out of 10, and the French site Mondocine rated it 2.5 out of 5 as an entertaining but forgettable B-movie. Terror Acto was warmer, calling it solid entertainment from a talented director despite a weak resolution, and Movie Burner Entertainment described it as a pleasant surprise, scoring it 7 out of 10.
Reviews
- IMDb: 5.2/10 from around 2,780 ratings
- Rotten Tomatoes: 80% from five critic reviews, audience score 28% from more than 50 ratings
- SensaCine: critics 2.8/5, users 2.4/5
- A Golpe de Efecto: 5.5/10
- Movie Burner Entertainment: 7/10
