Sister Death

There is something fundamentally unsettling about a horror movie this bright. Most directors hide their monsters in the ink-black shadows of a basement or behind the convenient gloom of a flickering lightbulb, but Paco Plaza decides to drown his audience in the harsh, punishing sunlight of post-Civil War Spain. It is a bold move that makes every stain on a white habit and every crack in a marble floor feel like a personal threat.

I watched Sister Death while wearing a pair of incredibly itchy wool socks that my aunt gave me for Christmas, and honestly, the constant low-grade physical discomfort felt like the perfect way to experience a film about religious penance. It kept me in the same prickly, agitated headspace as our protagonist, Narcisa.

A Different Shade of Dread

Set in 1949, Sister Death serves as a prequel to Plaza’s 2017 hit Verónica, though you don't need to have seen the first film to feel the chill here. We follow Narcisa (played with a captivating, wide-eyed intensity by Aria Bedmar), a "holy child" who grew up with the burden of being a local celebrity after a supposed divine vision. Now a novice, she arrives at a convent-turned-school to teach a group of girls who are clearly more afraid of what’s in the shadows than they are of Mother Superior (Luisa Merelas).

Plaza, who most horror fans know as the co-creator of the legendary [REC] series, has traded the frantic, shaky-cam energy of his youth for a precise, claustrophobic elegance. By shooting in a boxy 1.33:1 aspect ratio, he forces us to look directly at the characters, trapping them in the frame just as they are trapped by their vows and the thick stone walls surrounding them. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a paper cut doused in holy water—deliberate, painful, and surprisingly sharp.

The Weight of the Habit

The streaming era has been a bit of a mixed bag for horror. For every breakout hit, there are a dozen "content" entries that feel like they were assembled by an algorithm trying to figure out what a jump scare is. Sister Death is a refreshing outlier. It feels like a piece of genuine filmmaking that just happens to be on Netflix, rather than a "Netflix Movie."

Much of that success rests on Aria Bedmar. As Narcisa, she has to navigate the thin line between faith and fear, and her performance is remarkably physical. When she’s crawling through air vents or staring down a chair that moves on its own, you feel the genuine exhaustion of her character. She’s joined by Almudena Amor, who broke out in The Good Boss (2021), and here brings a haunting, ethereal quality to Sister Socorro. The chemistry between the sisters isn't about warmth; it’s about a shared, unspoken understanding of the secrets buried beneath the floorboards.

I’ve always found that the best horror movies understand that humans are much scarier than ghosts. While there are certainly supernatural elements at play—including a very creepy game of "hangman" played with invisible entities—the true rot comes from the choices made by the living. Plaza and screenwriter Jorge Guerricaechevarría lean into the historical context of the era, where the trauma of the Spanish Civil War still lingers in the silence of the convent.

Blood, Marble, and Old Secrets

The film’s third act is where things get truly wild. If the first hour is a slow-burn exercise in atmospheric tension, the finale is a full-throttle descent into madness. Plaza doesn’t skimp on the practical effects, and there’s a tactile, "crunchy" quality to the horror that I really appreciated. In an era where CGI blood often looks like floating grape juice, seeing real-feeling gore and makeup work is a treat for the genre purist in me.

One of the coolest details I found out after watching is that they filmed in the Monastery of San Jerónimo de Cotalba. Knowing the location was a real centuries-old holy site adds an extra layer of weight to those scenes of Narcisa wandering the halls at night. You can’t fake that kind of architectural history, and the building feels like the most important supporting character in the cast.

While the film eventually circles back to connect the dots with Verónica, it succeeds primarily because it stands on its own two feet. It’s a story about the loss of innocence and the terrifying realization that the "miracles" we pray for might actually be curses in disguise. It’s nun-sploitation with a PhD, trading cheap thrills for a deep, resonant sense of history and hurt.

Sister Death is a masterclass in how to build a prequel that feels essential rather than redundant. It manages to be both a gorgeous piece of period cinema and a genuinely frightening horror flick that respects the intelligence of its audience. If you can handle the slow build, the payoff is one of the most striking sequences in modern Spanish horror. Just maybe skip the itchy wool socks when you sit down to watch it.