Movie Review: 'Night of the Virgin'

Night of the Virgin turned my stomach. That sounds like the start of a negative review but, far from it. I actually loved Night of the Virgin. This Spanish import from director Roberto San Sebastian is hysterically funny and deeply disturbing all at once. The film is teeming with horrific invention and deep themes about women and sexuality and I loved every minute of it, even as I was queasy most of the way.

Nico (Javier Bodalo) was attending a New Years Eve party and looking for a hook up when he met Medea (Miriam Martin), an older attractive woman ready to take pity on sad, skinny, rat-like Nico. Medea, however, has a deep dark secret, one that she needs Nico and his virginity to help her bring to light. Medea is a member of a strange, cultish religion with rites and rituals that poor Nico has unwittingly become part of.

How to explain what happens in Night of the Virgin? The film has numerous, fascinating influences from David Cronenberg to David Lynch to Franz Kafka. Medea's apartment is a horror show that only Eraserhead might find cozy and given what happens in the film's final act, Eraserhead appears to be a major influence on Roberto San Sebastian.

Night of the Virgin is gross to a degree that left me queasy. My stomach turned due to the awesome viscera on display and the ever-increasing shocks from the story being told. Night of the Virgin does not let up. We join the story with poor, simple Nico striking out and getting puked on and follow that with a deeply unsatisfying sexual encounter with Medea.

This is followed by a bowl full of blood, a floor teeming with cockroaches, and a pair of foul-smelling panties that are all coincidentally, deeply important to the unfolding plot of Night of the Virgin. The film features only three different locations: the nightclub, an exterior set for the ending of the movie, and Medea's Eraserhead inspired apartment which acts as a third character in this mostly two character movie.

As Night of the Virgin began I was convinced that Nico was going to be a victim of this woman who was perhaps seeking out obviously virginal men for a ritualistic murder. That would be a conventional plot by comparison to what we actually get which is an ever-increasing schlockfest that never fails to shock, appall, and surprise.

Night of the Virgin also happens to be hysterically funny. The laughs come from your increasing shock over how the director Sebastian keeps topping one horrific scene with another horrific scene but there are some genuine, intended laughs early in the film that come from Nico's awkwardness and Medea's slobby apartment.

Be warned, Night of the Virgin is really, really gross. That said, it's gross in a manner that is artful and inventive. There is style to the viscera of Night of the Virgin; unique camera angles and unconventional pacing. The gore is mind-blowingly effective, reminiscent of Cronenberg in how graphic the violence is and how gut-churningly effective the body horror is.

The body horror of Night of the Virgin is remarkable. There is a pregnancy in the movie and it is portrayed in a fashion that left me emotionally scarred and yet entertained in the most twisted and gruesome fashion. I don't usually go for gross movies that seem to be gross for the sake of gross, but Night of the Virgin has so much going for it that I could not help but admire the grotesquerie on display.

Night of the Virgin is also rife with double meanings metaphors. The film exploits male fears about sexuality and aging for awkward laughs and terrifying laughs. Nico's insecurities and minor deviancy are played for huge awkward laughs and Medea's efforts to get him to have sex with her and his inability or unwillingness to consummate the relationship are wildly weird and hilarious.

The film is also genuinely horrifying. Much of the excitement of Night of the Virgin comes from the ratcheting up of the tension that begins toward the end of the first act, just as you are getting comfortable in this strange universe and then begins to fly nearly out of control as the viscera spills and the plot shocks come one after another after another.

I love Night of the Virgin. As much as I don't go for gross-out movies, the gross-out here is top notch. Director Roberto San Sebastian is a bold and ballsy filmmaker with a weird but confident eye. As much as he is out to shock you he's also entertaining you with how remarkably bold and daring Night of the Virgin is.

It's not for the squeamish, especially if you are sensitive to squishy, squicky sound design, but if you are up for a challenge you will be rewarded with a movie experience that is artful, gross, daring, and daunting.