The Grandmother (2022)

The Grandmother is the kind of slow-burn horror that doesn’t just want to scare you—it wants to move into your head and rearrange the furniture. Paco Plaza turns a familiar premise (a young woman returning home to care for an ailing relative) into a suffocating chamber piece, where the Madrid apartment becomes a beautifully designed trap and every hallway feels a little too quiet for comfort. Almudena Amor gives the film a grounded, anxious pulse, while Vera Valdez’s presence is unnervingly magnetic, letting dread seep in through glances and silences as much as through shocks, all carried by a score that presses on you like a hand on the back of your neck. It’s not for viewers who want quick jolts or a breezy ride—this one is patient, intimate, and often unsettling—but if you like horror that’s atmospheric, adult, and thematically sharp about aging and inheritance, it’s a chillingly confident watch.

The Grandmother clearly wants to be a stylish, slow-burn descent into dread, using caregiving guilt and generational fear as the engine for its horror. The problem is it often feels like it’s borrowing familiar haunted-apartment and witchy beats without adding enough of its own identity, and it telegraphs key ideas early enough that the suspense can deflate. When it can’t build tension, it leans on loud jolts and nightmare imagery, which may work for jump-scare fans but can feel generic if you’re hoping for something more psychologically sharp. Still, the Madrid setting and a committed central performance give it some atmosphere—just don’t go in expecting a fresh, deeply nuanced horror drama, and be aware it’s also fairly upfront with nudity and adult content.