On the 3rd Day
A long drive through the night, at the wheel Cecilia Amato, in the back her son Martín, playing with his toys; on the side of the road, a woman waving for help, a momentary distraction as Cecilia turns her head, failing to see the flatbed truck driven by Padre Enrique coming towards her. The collision and its aftermath a matter of moments, it is three days before Cecilia staggers confused into a service station and is taken to hospital.
Cecilia accosted by her ex-husband and pursued by the police, Inspector Ricardo Ventura regarding her as a suspect in the disappearance of Martín and the driver of the broken-down car, Lucía Fígaro, she is unable to account for where she has been in the missing time or where Martín might be, yet every time she looks in a mirror she glimpses him just out of reach behind her.
Starring Mariana Anghileri as Cecilia, distraught and disoriented but driven, placing her faith in the shifty-looking Doctor Hernán Pastori (Lautoro Delgado) who takes her to a medium to try to access her lost memories rather than trusting the police, On the 3rd Day (Al Tercer Día) is directed by Daniel de la Vega from a script by Alberto Fasce and Gonzalo Ventura, filled alternately with religious iconography and reflections, in mirrors, of motherhood, of mortality.
Played as a mystery and more focused on style and atmosphere than rational behaviour from the characters, despite multiple missing people and at least one unexplained dead body in the hospital Ventura (Osvaldo Santoro) fails to call for support, while Fernando (Diego Cremonesi) seems to believe it will be more productive to beat the answers out of the amnesiac Cecilia rather than help her.
Worse, filmed in Argentina and with the original dialogue spoken in Spanish, On the 3rd Day has inexplicably been dubbed so badly it is egregiously distracting in every scene, voices which so obviously belong to a different person they constantly jar, all apparently recorded without accommodation being made for the varied locations of the film.
The interiors of cars, homes, hospitals, stone cellars or the inside of a wooden crate all apparently having the same acoustic properties as the great outdoors, this oversight is doubly frustrating when the plot which runs beneath these diversions deserves attention, On the 3rd Day an otherwise interesting twist which plays on the age-old themes of resurrection and the blood which must be sacrificed for survival.
On the 3rd Day will be available on Shudder from Thursday 7th July
