What is it about elderly people that makes them so terrifying in horror films? I can’t explain it, but Shudder certainly appreciates it if their latest film is anything to go by. Crazy Old Lady is taking that trope literally as it hits the streamer, and FANGORIA is excited to premiere an exclusive clip from the Spanish language film.
Written and directed by Martín Maregui, Crazy Old Lady stars Carmen Maura in the eponymous role, alongside Daniel Hendler, Augustina Liendo, Emma Cetrángolo, Germán de Silva, Camila Peralta, and Ezequiel Díaz. The film’s synopsis is as follows:
On a stormy evening, Pedro receives a desperate call from his ex-girlfriend asking him to look after her senile mother, Alicia. What begins as a simple favor soon turns into a terrifying ordeal when Alicia refuses to let him leave. Trapped in the house, he’s forced to play along with her sadistic games to survive the night.
Crazy Old Lady is produced by genre icon J.A. Bayona, known for his 2007 film The Orphanage, as well as Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Joining him as producers are Belén Atienza, Gabriela Cárcova Krichmar, Ramón Campos, and Víctor Fandiño.
“There are films that are born from the heart, this one is born out of my liver,” Marengui says. “As if it had been bred out of a need rather than desire, seeking to shed light over things that bother and frighten, seeking to contain, exorcize a certain violence, certain nightmares, just to discover it cannot be contained, because those nightmares have a life of their own.”
“We are the heirs of this institutional violence that spreads like a tacit language, determining our identity, transmitting itself even through love…I want the audience to worry about seeing what happens next, in every detail, in the actor’s face, for Alicia’s wrinkles to summon the fear, the anguish, the tenderness. For her to be able to generate, at the same time, profound empathy and visceral rejection.”
Crazy Old Lady is streaming now on Shudder.
