You may remember Ivana Baquero as the cute 12-year-old Ofelia in Pan's Labyrinth. She took home a shelf full of awards, including a Goya. She's 15 now, and still cute. She is among a group of teens that find a thief (Maru Valdivielso) dressed as Santa down a hole, and they torture her to get the money she stole.Paco Plaza ({Rec}, Romasanta) directs this fascinating film. He is assisted by Luis Berdejo as the screenwriter. Berdejo also penned {REC}.The teens watch Zombie Invasion on TV and decide to perform the ritual on the thief. It works, and they are running for their lives as she comes after them with an ax. They remember the techniques in Zombie Invasion to kill the zombie, but it was Karate Kid that did the job.Valdivielso (Romasanta) was excellent as the thief/zombie. All of the kids were super. It was an enjoyable horror film.

I'm glad I caught this movie at 3:00 a.m. on Sky's "The Film Zone". I'm a huge fan of Spanish Horror and I decided to give it a chance. Although this movie isn't 100% Horror, it has a vibe of creepiness mixed with a regular children's adventure flick.The display of cruelty is always present and towards the end of the movie, when the "old mean woman" escapes from the hole (literally), things get darker and even with a feeling of a late 80's slasher. While the "torture" scenes are not very graphic or even violent, you feel disturbed with the children's behavior. Then the good gore comes when the kids try to get rid off the woman well, by killing her and doing horrible things to her eyes and head. You need to watch it.I recommend this movie only for those who are into the typical "cat and the mouse" plot, and for those who can take children being mean and horrible with a grown-up who even if stole and made something wrong, didn't deserve to be punished like that! In my opinion. But revenge, sweet revenge always happens even for these children.The atmosphere is always dark and unsettling but not only because of the female villain, but because of the sad and cold settings. No Merry Christmas for everyone.EERIE DETAIL TO CONSIDER: We can only see adults' feet and torso but not their faces. This detail may have been taken from Mexican chiller "Veveno para las Hadas". Brrrrr.

Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad is set in a small Spanish town during Christmas 1985. Five young friends named Koldo (Christian Casas), Peti (Roge Babia), Tito (Paul Poch), Eugenio (Daniel Casadellà) & Moni (Ivana Baquero) find a woman dressed as Santa Claus stuck in a large hole in the local woods they play in, they quickly discover that her name is Rebeca (Maru Valdivielso) & she is wanted by the police for a bank robbery. The greedy little git's decide to keep her trapped down the hole until she tells them what she did with the money she stole so they can steel it from her. Straving & badly injured Rebeca seemingly has no choice to tell them...Known under the title Films to Keep You Awake: The Christmas Tale to English speaking audiences this Spanish production was directed by Paco Plaza & is part of the six film Films to Keep You Awake series of made-for-Spanish telly horror films. The script by Luis Berdejo starts off as a fairly simple thriller with the twelve year old kids keeping Rebeca down a hole in the woods so they can get the money she stole, this aspect of the film is alright but far from brilliant. Then something right out of the very worst 80's horror film happens, two of the kids who like watching horror films bizarrely conduct a Voodoo ritual for no apparent reason they saw in a film they watched called Zombie Invasion which brings Rebeca back from the dead when she dies down the hole. Right, well isn't that quite the most stupid thing you have ever heard? Why on Earth did they reenact the Voodoo ritual? Why did it even work? Then for the last twenty odd minutes Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad becomes a slasher film as a reanimated back from the dead zombie Rebeca stalks the annoying kids with an axe. Unfortunately imagine the very worst teen slasher film from the 80's & then triple it, Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad has no nudity, no deaths, no gore, no blood, no mystery surrounding the stalkers identity & it's as lifeless a twenty minutes of predictable slasher film nonsense as I have ever seen. The film also raises the unpalatable notion that watching horror films causes people to turn bad since the two most evil, sadistic & nasty of the kids are the two that watched the zombie film, talk about alienating your audience! Then there are a few plot holes like how did Rebeca get out of the hole at the end? Why was there a big hole in the woods anyway & why did Rebeca fall down it? Couldn't she have just like walked around it? It wasn't exactly inconspicuous...Director Plaza does alright but I never got the feeling it was Christmas, there are no decorations or anything like that & apart from Rebeca being dressed in a Santa Claus outfit nothing relates to it being Christmas at all. Plaza also takes the odd decision to not properly show any of the adults faces, the cops & the kids parents are all framed so as to have their heads either obscured by an object or cut off the top of the frame. Strange & there's no real reason for it as far as I could tell. The only bit of gore is when someone's head is impaled on a metal spike. Apart from some really lame stalk 'n' slash moments at the end there's nothing in Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad to indicate that it is even a horror film. There's certainly nothing scary here & there's no sort of atmosphere.Yechnically the film is alright, apparently shot in Barcelona in Spain. It's reasonably well made & put together. Shot in Spanish the film is subtitled, some of the subtitles don't stay on screen for long though so you will have to be quick. The acting seems OK but as someone who doesn't speak Spanish it's hard to tell.Películas Para no Dormir: Cuento de Navidad is another entry in the Films to Keep You Awake series that for me is far more likely to send you to sleep. It really doesn't make any sense, it has lots of holes (besides the one Rebeca falls in) & there's nothing new or original or horrific about it.

"Stories to keep you awake" was a legendary Spanish TV series that told independent suspense / horror stories every week. As of 2006, some Spanish media have joined resources to produce a follow-up in the shape of six direct-to-DVD films, directed by some of the most popular Spanish film directors. "Cuento de Navidad" is helmed by Paco Plaza, director of "The second name" and "Romasanta".Among the bunch of films that compose this series, this may easily be the best of the lot. Paco Plaza creates a surprisingly cruel negative to teen films, such as "The Goonies" or the Spanish TV series "Verano azul". Set in the early 80s (pop culture references abound in the story), it tells the story of a group of early teenagers that find a wounded woman in the woods, dressed up as Santa. Rather than helping her, they start abusing her, and as soon as they learn she's the suspect of a bank robbery they increase the abuse in order to obtain the robbed money themselves.It's a bleak story, full of cruelty, and Plaza's talent is evident when he uses elements that in other hands would be comedic to increase the cruelty of the tale: when the abused woman manages to turn tables on the kids and pursues them axe in hand, they mistake her for a zombie, and in their efforts to defend themselves of her attacks, the mimic the techniques they've seen in horror movies, much to our horror.It's not a perfect film. I've mentioned how the tale is packed with pop culture references, and some of them feel a bit gratuitous, although they are well integrated within the plot. I was specially amused by a zombie flick that appears recurrently, a parody of Lucio Fulci's movies that strucks more than a chord. Watching local rock and roll star Loquillo as a zombie hunter (with dubbed southamerican accent to boot) is absolutely priceless.