December 21st, 2021

  The Spanish cinema tends to produce some uniquely disturbing nightmares. They don’t even need to involve supernatural – the natural aspect of them is unnatural enough as is.
   This time, in Two, the premise is simple enough. Two people who believe themselves to be complete strangers wake up attached to each other by their stomach. The stiches are crude, but they hold. The sanity will be tougher to hold on to.
    As their memories and their strength slowly returns to them, they begin to attempt to unravel what’s going on. They’ve got no phones, no means on contacting outside, no connection to each other that they can think of, outside of the fact that the female counterpart of their unseemly sandwich is married to a much older and very jealous man who has dedicated his life to studying the number two. Sure, it’s a good number. One up from the loneliest. But would his obsession merit this…?
     What’s so effective about this nightmare is that it has a quality of unraveling downwards. This isn’t about plucky protagonists smashing through the odds and coming out on top the way you might expect from a more traditional (say, American) movie. This is a situation that continues to devolve straight down to its inevitable and tragic denouement.
     You will get to learn how they came to be together – and it’s a doozy – but don’t go in expecting a happy ending.
      Coming in at just 71 minutes and featuring actors I'm not familiar with, the movie is all the more effective for it. It does its most with a seemingly straightforward concept, this is the kind of nightmare where every turn gets more terrifying and you can’t wait to wake up, knowing that it still might haunt you one you do.
      Very disturbing in the best possible way. Recommended for fans of dark psychological scares.