EVERYONE WILL BURN **** Spain 2021 Dir: David Hebrero. 125 mins
Spain, the country that gave us those heady, twisted days of Jess Franco beginning with The Awful Dr. Orloff (1962) and Amando de Ossorio’s The Tombs Of The Blind Dead (1972) brings us an Art house film of devilry, destruction and dubious morals.
Everyone Will Burn (2021) or to give it its Spanish title Y Todos Arderán is such a picture that it often wears many heads as to what it is supposed to be. Written by its director David Hebrero and Javier Kiran have fashioned a story similar to The Omen: The Final Conflict (1981) with dashes of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and the Nunsploitation genre. The main difference is that Everyone Will Burn (2021) is executed on a large budget with startling visuals and direction. (Some apologizes to Rosemary’s Baby (1968) on direction) The drawback is that it sometimes gets lost in the visuals with too long a story in places.
The film opens with a bit of writing and narration (in my case subtitled) referencing a secretive church order and a prophecy about the apocalypse The Order of Rozas has stopped the cataclysm with the sacrifice of a child some forty years ago.
Maria José (Macarena Gómez) standing on the edge of a bridge. Clad in black, clearly in mourning, about to plunge off an edge as she (we later learn) lost her son. Maria’s actions are stopped by the sudden appearance of a young girl Lucía (Sofía García) addressing her as her mother. The young girl is in bedclothes and covered in mud. Maria inquires about her parents and concludes to take her to the local police station. During their car ride, the radio broadcast talks of growing natural disasters up to and even including the melting of the polar ice caps. The two are pulled over by police for a broken taillight and their questioning about the girl leads them to suspect something is wrong. An officer tries to restrain Maria and gets rough by slamming her onto the vehicle. Their actions prompt the girl to take control of one cop who stabs the other and ignites on fire himself. All of this is shot with wonderful angles and wide panoramic looks of highway and burning dead people.
Everybody Will Burn (2021) follows the plight of the girl and her would-be mother. Uncovering such family secrets as Maria José’s husband David played by Rodolfo Sancho has an affair with Maria’s younger sister who has disappeared. The two try to reconcile in their home that was paid for by artwork. The world disintegrates around them with natural disasters, people being killed, and climate troubles as their own marriage gets deeper into despair. The whole act seems to be controlled by the young girl Lucía who came into their lives. Not your average Devil Child story. There are also subplots of priests who were part of the original cult and didn’t know it and now must pay for their crimes. Magic and Devilry are at the forefront in the conclusion leaving one to wonder if the child was the evil one after all.
In Spanish or Latin films particularly genre style one has to get accustomed to large top acting. Jess Franco’s work is filled with it along with other examples that I have seen such as The Black Vampire (aka El Vampiro Negro) 1953 Film noir and the visually superior Spanish version of Dracula (1931) produced by Universal studios. This is part of the film’s charm or it can grate on one’s nerves as Macarena Gómez and others scream in high-pitched voices. The women in the film do more violence than the men to others and themselves without a ‘Final girl’ in sight which is refreshing. The film also shows numerous hard slaps both men and women which may not be acceptable to some folks but again fit the story.
Everyone Will Burn (2021) covers a lot of story but is easily followed with viewing. The drawback is there is much to tell and couple that with some tremendous visuals using the whole of the screen and a music track featuring classical and Goth tunes you have an interesting mix for the mind.
Review by Terry Sherwood