Director – Carlos Theron, Screenplay – Marta Buchaca & Fernando Navarro, Producer – Kiko Martinez, Photography – Angel Amoros, Music – Victor Reyes, Visual Effects Supervisor – Pablo Moran, Visual Effects – Free Your Mind (Supervisor – Helmuth Barnert), Special Effects Supervisor – Juan Ramon Molina, Makeup Effects – Nacho Diaz, Production Design – Abdon Alcaniz & Marta Navarro. Production Company – Nadie es Perfecto/Fenomenes Producciones SL.
Cast
Belen Rueda (Sagrario Ruiz de Carvajal), Toni Acosta (Gloria Palomeque), Gracia Olayo (Paz Carnero), Emilio Gutierrez Caba (Father Jose Maria Pilon), Miren Ibarguren (Portera), Oscar Ortuno (Pablo Marinon), Ivan Massague (Enrique), Lorena Lopez (Marisa), Maria Gil (Susanita), Fran Cantos (Gerardo Plana), Antonio Pagudo (Camerero Jesus)
Plot
Madrid, 1998. Father Pilon heads the Hepta Group that has been existence since the 1980s. They are a multi-disciplinary team, including physicists and a medium among their number, who have formed to investigate reports of the supernatural. The group has gained reasonable media coverage. They meet to consider investigating reports of a haunted antique shop. However, Paz the documentarian is looking after her grandchildren and Gloria has to go to a date, and so nothing is done. Afterwards, Father Pilon goes on alone to look at the building alone but is attacked. With him in hospital, the others decide they should investigate. They find the building is indeed haunted and their investigation soon places them up against forces of evil.
Phenomena is a film based on the real-life Grupo Hepta (Hepta Group). The group was founded in Madrid in 1987 by Professor Jose Maria Pilon, a Jesuit priest. As the film shows, members of the group come from various disciplines, ranging from the Catholic priesthood to clairvoyants, sceptics and scientists, who meet to examine reported paranormal phenomena. The group gained reasonable media exposures with tv coverage of their cases. The film is loosely based on a couple of the incidents investigated by the group.
Phenomena feels as though it was inspired by the success of The Conjuring (2013) and sequels, which made the claim to be based on supposed true-life Paranormal Investigators Ed and Lorrain Warren. As with the heavily fictionalised accounts of the Warrens exploits, you suspect that the scenes here that have the Hepta Group encountering demonic forces, becoming possessed by them and attempts to kill members of the group after they try to stop an abusive parent has been made up by the film, placing Phenomena well into the territory of Films That Make Dubious Claims to Be Based on True Stories.
As a bandwagon copy of The Conjuring films, Phenomena is not uninteresting. Unlike the Warrens, who were depicted as heroic crusading figures, the investigators here are all flawed individuals – Belen Rueda and her attachment to her late husband and especially Toni Acosta and her dates and desire to leave the group. These are elements that weave in and out of the ghostly drama with sometimes comic effect. The film gets a trio of entertaining performances out of the actresses, especially Toni Acosta. One is not sure if Phenomena falls into the Women Positive and Girl Power movement overtaking screens in the 2020s, but it is noticeable how the men of the group – Emilio Gutierrez Caba’s priest and Oscar Ortuno as the young physicist – are sidelined when it comes the main sections of the plot.
Grupo Hepta – (l to r) Gracia Olayo, Belen Rueda, Emilio Gutierrez Caba and Toni Acosta
Less effective is when Phenomena acts as a ghost story. In fact, it is not exactly clear what is going on in the apartment – it is just a salad of genre tropes involving hauntings, demonic forces, possessions and séances without the agency they are dealing being made clear. James Wan clearly has the edge over director Carlos Theron when it comes to creating scenes that make you jump. Theron tosses in the odd spontaneously opening cupboard door and most effectively a séance scene where the planchette gets thrown to impale in the wall and then Toni Acosta’s exhaled mouthful of cigarette smoke seems to reveal a figure present in the room.
Phenomena should not be confused with Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985) or the John Travolta psychic powers film Phenomenon (1996).
Phenomena was the sixth film for Spanish director Carlos Theron who has elsewhere made comedies such as Hot School 2 (2011), Impavido (2012), It’s for Your Own Good (2017), I Can Quit Whenever I Want (2017) and Operation Camaron (2021), all non-genre vehicles, in between various tv work.
