La Influencia (ENG: The Influence) is a 2019 Spanish horror movie by director Denis Rovira van Boekholt.
The movie follows Alicia, a nurse moving back to her childhood home with her family in order to care for her dying, aging mother, Victoria. Strange things start happening, especially after it's revealed in Victoria's living will that everything is left to Alicia's daughter Nora, and Alicia tries to reconcile the abusive childhood she survived through in that house.
The film was released in October of 2019 on Netflix.
Tropes
- Abusive Parents: Victoria was a physically and emotionally abusive mother who would recur even to witchcraft to control her daughters. She is even willing to kill her own daughters and granddaughter to further her plans.
- Accidental Murder: During the fight at the end of the movie, Mikel reflectively throws Nora out the window, not knowing who is attacking him. She dies on the fall, but Alicia manages to bring her back by reviving Victoria.
- Ambiguous Situation: The ending implies, but leaves ambiguous whether Victoria succeeded possessing Nora.
- Animal Motif: Victoria is heavily associated with spiders. The movie starts with multiple images of spiders, she has a locket with spiders engraved, and spiders are shown to live in her house.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Victoria, while possessing Nora, kicks a dog on the head when he starts messing with the flowerbed she planted where she buried Sara. During the night, a possessed Nora goes back there and kills the dog with an axe.
- Body Surf: Victoria's plan. She is transferring herself to her granddaughter's body, it's the reason why she left all her money to her. Strangely, she is even capable of inhabiting both bodies at once, and hold conversations with herself, though it's implied that what is inside Nora is actually a demon.
- Creepy Child:
- Luna, the strange girl Nora befriends. She actually is a younger version of Victoria directing manipulating Nora.
- Nora becomes more and more of this due to the influence of her grandmother. She's even creepier when Victoria finally takes hold of her.
- Death of a Child: Luna is a girl that Victoria killed and possessed. Her body is seen on the pond of her home at the end of the movie.
- Evil Old Folks: Victoria is a decrepit old woman that is on death's door after a terminal disease, and is also a crazy witch with a vendetta against her own daughters.
- Fingore: At one point, Alicia flashbacks to a point where her mother cut her toenail open, possibly for witchcraft purposes. Another member of the family had their entire finger cut off and put inside a locket for the same purpose.
- Foreshadowing:
- At one point, Nora mentions how one of their family members is missing a finger now. When Alicia is investigating the lockets, she finds that one of them has a finger inside it, meaning he was being controlled by Victoria all along.
- At one point, Sara goes down the basement and stares intensely at an animal skull her mother keeps in the basement. In another moment, Alicia has a flashback of being under the stairs and grabbing someone going down. Both were part of the prank they played on their father that cause his death.
- Freudian Excuse: Victoria, at some point, was a witch that used her powers for good, however, she was driven insane by her husband's death, caused by her kids playing a prank on him, and dedicated herself to witchcraft, not only to avoid dying like him, but to take revenge on her own daughters.
- Magical Accessory: Victoria wears a locked with a spider and a jewel in it. The locket makes her able to control people as long as she puts a part of them inside of it, which has included Sara's teeth and Alicia's toenail.
- Shovel Strike: Nora and Luna force Sara to dig her own grave lying that this is in order to search for a locket. When Sara realizes what is going on, she tries to escape by attacking Luna, but Nora strikes her with a shovel, and Luna finishes this by turning into Victoria and smashing her face with the shovel.
- Skyward Scream: Nora releases a maddened scream after killing the dog in Sara's house and painting herself in blood.
- Terms of Endangerment: "Little Swine", which Victoria uses towards the members of the family she so despises.
- The Tooth Hurts: A flashback of Sara's shows her mother ripping out her teeth barehanded and throwing it in a locket.
- Voice Changeling: Victoria, in part due to her Body Surf powers, seem to be able to channel her original voice in all bodies she posses. Including Luna and Nora.
