Crazy Old Lady tackles the terror of aging

Carmen Maura as Alicia and Daniel Hendler as Pedro - Courtesy of Shudder

Though writer/director Martin Mauregui's Crazy Old Lady certainly contains plenty of nightmare fuel and a few standard horror tropes, it's hard not to see the movie as a metaphor for aging and just how scary that can be. Driven by Carmen Maura's gripping performance as Alicia, the movie underscores how difficult it can be to care for loved ones, especially when their memory starts slipping.

Other than Maura, the feature stars Agustina Liendo as Alicia's daughter, Laura. In the opening minutes, Laura is on a road trip with her own daughter, Elena (Emma Cetrangolo). During the drive, Laura receives an increasing number of erratic phone calls from Alicia. This opening is incredibly effective in showcasing Alicia's crumbling cognitive state but also how difficult it is to deal with a parent who sometimes makes sense and other times does not.

About 10 minutes into the runtime, Laura panics and urges her ex-husband, Pedro (Daniel Hendler), to check on Alicia and stay the night at her home, especially since she can't reach her mother's at-home nurse. When Pedro arrives at Alicia's house, he finds a lot more than he bargained for. Alicia drugs him and chains him to a chair. From that point, she inflicts all kinds of torture upon him. There's one scene in particular that involves an electric knife. Once you see it, you won't be able to forget it. She continually calls him Cesar, mistaking him for her ex-husband, though the reasons for this aren't clear until about the film's halfway point. It becomes evident that the there's some layered trauma at play here, which also involves Elena.

For the most part, Crazy Old Lady is a single-location film and economical in its scope. Once Pedro arrives at Alicia's house, the movie never leaves that setting. That said, it's effective in establishing the dark mood and tone, especially the shadowy hallways, the dim lighting, and the constant rain pattering against the windows. Alicia's massive house looks and feels Gothic in nature, as if it's harboring secrets about to burst through the creaky floorboards. Poor Pedro is an unwilling victim.

One of the film's flaws is that it sometimes meanders into various other threads, as Alicia goes off on one of her non-sensical narratives. This is fine at first, but by late into the runtime, it grows a bit tiresome. That said, the last 20 minutes or so truly lean into the horror. Alicia unleashes some nasty and sadistic torture upon poor Pedro, and there's nothing at all he can do about it. In fact, he barely leaves the chair.

It can't be understated just how great Maura is as Alicia. She really carries a lot of this film. She's charming one moment and terrifying the next. Her monologues make sense one moment before veering off into the bizarre. I doubt this could have been an easy role to play, but Maura truly does an incredible job showcasing Alicia's failing cognitive state and the deadly repercussions.

Crazy Old Lady certainly has plenty of scares, but the true horror lies in the depiction of aging and how hard that is on family members. The decrepit house establishes a sinister mood and tone, while Maura plays one heck of a villain who sweetens up her victim one moment before inflicting horrific violence upon him, thinking he's responsible for her wounds that never fully healed.

Check out Crazy Old Lady on Shudder.

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