From Spanish director Oriol Paulo, comes a taut thriller ‘The Body’ (El Cuerpo), one of the most original thrillers in recent times. This is a riveting movie that keeps its audience engaged from the first scene to its explosive climax.
The movie’s inimitable success prompted unofficial remakes in Kannada and Tamil(Game/Oru Mellia Kodu), an official remake in Hindi(The Body) and an official remake in Korean(The Vanished). There are plans to remake it in Hollywood too.
The movie opens with a man running in mortal fear, through the woods. He is dressed in black and a baton. It is the dead of night as the man scurries through the woods and then, on to the highway, right into the path of a moving car.
The following scene, a senior police officer revealed to be Inspector Peña( José Coronado) , receives a call asking him to come to the Morgue immediately. It is revealed that a security officer from the morgue, killed himself by running into a moving car after seeing something that terrified him. It is also revealed that the body of a middle aged successful and powerful business woman, Mayka Villaverde is missing from the morgue.
Peña goes to the morgue and meets a colleague. As the two of them banter while walking in, it is revealed that Peña has a daughter in Berlin, who he has not seen in two years.
Meanwhile, the grieving widower of Mayka, Alex Ulloa(Hugo Silva), is at their mansion, is in a state of immense grief. Mayka’s two sisters try to console him ,but he tells them that he wishes to be alone. After they leave, the grieving man rises out of bed with a gush of new found energy. He gets on his motorcycle and rides through the night, to arrive at the house of his mistress Carla Miller (Aura Garrido).
He fixes himself a drink with no signs of the sorrow, he displayed earlier. Just then, he receives a call, asking him to come to the Police Station. He is also told that his wife’s body has been missing from the morgue. When he tells Carla the strange news, she asks him if it is possible that Mayka is still alive. He responds that he has done the necessary and that she is definitely ‘gone’.
When Alex arrives at the station, he meets with Peña and the interrogation begins. It is revealed that Mayka had returned from a business trip from LA and died of a heart attack. The two discuss how the body could have disappeared from the morgue.
Peña asks Alex if it is possible if Alex or Mayka had enemies. Peña hypothesizes that if it is the work of vandals, then the whole place would have been wrecked while in this case, they only have a single missing body. He also hypothesizes that this may be the work of a Satanic cult.
Next the coroner, a woman arrives on the scene. She is an old friend of Peña. She tells Alex that Mayka possibly suffered a Cardiovascular hazard from flying. She also mentions that the death can be a Catalepsy caused by a medication
After this discussion, Peña and the coroner have a tete-a tete. It is revealed that years before, Peña’s wife Ruth died in an automobile accident when Peña, Ruth and their young daughter were riding in their car, when another speeding car, came through a red light and crashed into them. Both Peña and his daughter survived tthe crash but Ruth was not that fortunate. After the incident, Peña had become an alcoholic, with anger management issues. He was now fighting a hard battle trying to sober up and in keeping his temperament in check.
Alex is interrogated as to where he was earlier that night. Peña claims that he heard a ringing phone when he called Alex. Alex answers that he had gone for a ride to get painkillers. Peña becomes more suspicious when Alex cannot show the pain killers he purchased.
Upon further interrogation it is revealed that Alex met his wife in California. He was years younger than her. He was a professor at that time. She was the owner of a large drug conglomerate. After they fell in love and got married, Alex worked at her lab. Throughout the marriage, Mayka was vindictive and constantly bossed around Alex with threats. She threatened divorce and to cut him off from her fortune entirely and often threatened to have him fired from his position, as she owned the company.
Back in the present, at one point during the interrogation, Alex is locked in a another room while Peña and the rest of the team step away to discuss things further. Alex finds a bottle of TH-16, a drug his company manufactures, in the room. It is revealed that Alex killed Mayka by secret adding TH-16 into her wine glass. TH-16 could induce a heart attack in a person, if the person took it in large dozes. Further, it left no traces to be detected,
Alex quickly pockets the bottle. At this time, Peña and his team walk in on him and frisk him. They find the bottle on his person and accuse Pena of murdering his wife.
One big fault with the plot I thought was, why does Alex not ask for a lawyer, at this time or probably much earlier? Maybe the laws are different in Spain. How will they work this detail out ,when this movie is made in Hollywood. That remains to be seen. In this movie, they did not even read him his rights.
After this, strange things begin to happen. Alex asks to use the restroom. I will not say more about the rest of this scene, as it will spoil the suspense for the viewer. This is one of the most intense scenes in the movie. There is also another scene where Alex is locked in a room full or corpses. Long story short, there are a series of clues that Alex finds, that suggest to Mayka may be alive and is toying with him, by playing psychological games.
There is one other flashback that shows Alex met Carla while he was teaching a class. She was one of his students. The two developed a relationship after which, Carla gave him an ultimatum. She told Alex that he should leave Mayka if he wanted to continue being with her. Alex, now too deep in his relationship, put his plan into action and as a result, Mayake was now dead.
The twists and turns come in troves from this point on until the movie reaches its unpredictable and denotative end. The superb acting of the entire cast enhances the plot aided by a strong screenplay. All this make for a classic psychological thriller, despite its faults.
Bay Area Bloke 