Verdict
Summary
Guys, I don’t know what to say about The Creature. It’s very, very disturbing on a level that I found repulsive and disgusting, but it’s not what I’d call a horror movie at all. It’s a very twisted drama from Spain from director Eloy De La Iglesia, and it feels like it’s a deliberate attempt to challenge its viewers to reevaluate their traditional views of marriage, sex, and even gender. In that regard, it was very ahead of its time, but damn: I hated it.
Plot:
A couple goes through the travails of a miscarriage, and then the REAL trial begins when they adopt a stray dog.
Review:
Media personality Marcos (Juan Diego) has women throwing themselves at him right and left for no-strings affairs, but he actually does love his wife Christina (Ana Belen) who has stopped loving him and only endures the relationship because he insists that they keep trying for a baby. When she gets pregnant, they have a happy nine months getting ready, but tragedy strikes: She miscarries right before term. The loss crushes them and makes their relationship that much more of a challenge, but an unexpected event changes everything: They adopt a stray dog almost as an afterthought, and they’re happy again. Marcos tries making Christina even happier by adopting another dog to be the dog’s mate, but Christina somehow perceives this as a threat to her love and affection for the first dog, whom she has developed, shall we say, very special feelings for. It is implied that she lusts after the dog and that she even (gasp!) has sex with it, and so when Marcos comes home one day to find the newer dog dead by mysterious means, he’s surprised but not shocked. Her relationship with the first dog begins to strain their relationship, and he insists that they get rid of it, and then when she relents, their relationship is at its absolute worst. When she gets pregnant again, he’s ecstatic … except she isn’t and she leaves him to raise the child on her own with her goddam dog, which she loves like a husband.
Guys, I don’t know what to say about The Creature. It’s very, very disturbing on a level that I found repulsive and disgusting, but it’s not what I’d call a horror movie at all. It’s a very twisted drama from Spain from director Eloy De La Iglesia, and it feels like it’s a deliberate attempt to challenge its viewers to reevaluate their traditional views of marriage, sex, and even gender. In that regard, it was very ahead of its time, but damn: I hated it. Some viewers will be mesmerized by it, while many others will be repulsed by it. I hated the character Belen plays, and the entire movie just made me angry.
Severin has brought The Creature to Blu-ray for the very first time, and this is the film’s first official North American release. Kudos to Severin for unearthing all kinds of cool and weird movies to their audience and their customers, but this one just wasn’t for me … at all. It comes in a nice 2K scan, with a few on-camera interviews, and an introduction by controversial filmmaker Gaspar Noe, who introduced the film at a screening in France.
