THE FUNERAL HOME ( LA FUNERARIA )

The Funeral Home was a solid little ghost story, but the real focus of the film really is just grim doom.

Bernardo runs a funeral home and lives in a house behind it with his family - his wife Estela and her daughter Irina. A mystery unfolds slowly as we watch the family spiral down into darkness. We get the classic bumps in the night and see that the family is doing its best to cope with whatever is going on in the house...and whoever is in there with them. 

People walk around like they are physically drained and without an ounce of joy in them. It's a very interesting take for the story. There's this feeling that everyone in the home is just being slowly crushed by gravity. Grim and resigned to just crawl through the day best they can. I loved that aspect of the film and that combined with the overall set design really set a mood that was very...very dark and sad. 

Now, this is a very slow burn and fans of a more CONJURING style of jump scare roller coaster may not find this to their liking. I, however, really enjoyed the trip. The acting is solid and the mystery around what is going on in the home is very well done and has some fantastic reveals as the film moves along. 

Mauro Iván Ojeda's writing and direction are fantastic. He manages to do a lot with the setting and lets the story unfold in a delightful way. I was riveted to the goings on and was all in on the ride. The way the story spun out along a very well defined line made it even more engaging. You're not just given everything via a spoon, but have to hang in there and work it out as the folks in the film work it out themselves. Loved it. 

I only had one item that I wasn't thrilled with in the film just because I'm not a fan of the type of plot point execution :::spoiler free::: , but I think it may just be on me and it was a very small bit of the whole, so I didn't really have all that hard a time making it through to the other side of it. :::grin::: All in all, I enjoyed the film and what it brought to the ghostly table. 

Fans of story and acting will want to check out La Funeraria for sure.