Nuno has turned twelve and started to become interested in tales of terror. When his father Sergio, the director, suggests they leave Madrid for the summer to stay in a recently shuttered hotel in Lisbon, he jumps at the chance. Devoid of any guests and gradually falling into disrepair, it feels like the perfectly spooky setting for his budding imagination, a new iteration of The Overlook Hotel from “The Shining”.
As Nuno roams the dark corridors, hides behind the fluttering curtains and watches creepy clips on his mobile phone, Sergio reflects in voice-over on what fear means and his own experiences with it: the documentary about a Portuguese serial killer he started making but never finished, the ghosts of cinema past that haunt film archives, the scary historical attempts to categorise criminals according to the shape of their skulls, that one startling encounter on the streets of São Paulo with his estranged dad back when he was a child. Wandering in winningly droll fashion between a meta-horror film, a deliberately meandering essay and a poignant drama of fathers and sons, “A Scary Movie” is a deliciously uncategorisable blend of fiction and documentary which asserts that dread is always part of the everyday. Is there anything scarier than family?

“Are you with us or against us?” Nothing less lies in the air, unspoken. No nuances, no discussions, hardly any choice. Did the tired man expect such life decisions after work? Unlikely. He just wanted to chill out and watch mindless television when suddenly an alien world on the screen catches up with him in the comfort of his home: A cult-like community lives next door, their behaviour ape-like, their faith fanatical, determined to convert him. Their flat is decorated with forests and deserts. Anyone who tries to look behind the painted wallpaper, to separate scenery from reality, commits treason and deserves banishment or death. Plato’s Cave Analogy in a radicalised version for the 21st century.
Freedom and truth or stability and a sense of belonging? Is the price of accepting a distorted reality just to be allowed to live too high? And most of all: Is there an alternative worth living? The world outside, behind the window, remains vague, its threats only implied. In this parable about passivity, curiosity and free choice, Alexandre Sousa touches on the urgent questions of our time: questions of isolation, echo chambers and the impossibility for humans to stay unpolitical. Do we even have a chance to resist?