Don't Listen

The Scream in the Static

In the crowded architecture of modern horror, the "haunted house" is less a genre and more of a weary landlord, renting out the same creaking floorboards and slamming doors to an endless succession of unsuspecting families. But occasionally, a tenant arrives who knows how to rearrange the furniture. *Don’t Listen* (originally *Voces*), the 2020 feature debut from Spanish director Ángel Gómez Hernández, initially appears to be just another lease on familiar property. We have the restoration-obsessed father, the skeptical mother, and the sensitive child tuning into frequencies no one else can hear. Yet, just as you settle in for a comfortable ride through James Wan-adjacent tropes, Hernández pulls the steering wheel, driving the narrative off a cliff of nihilistic brutality that is distinctly, refreshingly Spanish.



Visually, Hernández treats the camera less like an observer and more like a predator. Working with cinematographer Pablo Rosso (known for his claustrophobic work on *[REC]*), the film utilizes a visual language of suffocating intimacy. The terror here isn't just in the shadows; it is in the negative space behind a character's head or the agonizingly slow rack focus down a dark hallway. The film’s true antagonist, however, is its soundscape. In a genre often reliant on orchestral stings to force a reaction, *Don’t Listen* weaponizes silence and the mundane—the static of a walkie-talkie, the hum of a fly. The sound design is tactile; you don't just hear the buzzing, you feel the insect crawling inside your own ear canal, blurring the line between the character’s psychological disintegration and the viewer's sensory discomfort.



The film’s heart—black and bleeding as it may be—lies in its subversion of the "sacred child" trope. In American studio horror, the child is the baton in a relay race of survival; the goal is to get them across the finish line. Hernández shatters this rule with a shocking early-act tragedy that redefines the stakes entirely. By removing the primary vessel of innocence, the film transforms from a rescue mission into a grim autopsy of grief. Rodolfo Sancho, playing the father Daniel, delivers a performance anchored not in heroism, but in a desperate, almost pathetic need for absolution. His chemistry with Germán (Ramón Barea), the weary EVP expert who serves as the film’s spiritual anchor, grounds the supernatural theatrics in a palpable, human sadness. They are two men sifting through ashes, hoping to find a spark that might actually burn them alive.



Ultimately, *Don’t Listen* is a testament to the vitality of European horror, which remains unafraid of unhappy endings. It suggests that evil is not a puzzle to be solved or a beast to be banished, but a historic rot that infects the land itself—a legacy of the Spanish Inquisition that cannot be flipped for a profit. While it occasionally indulges in the jump-scare mechanics of *The Conjuring* universe, it executes them with a mean-spirited efficiency that commands respect. Hernández has crafted a debut that warns us that some voices shouldn't be ignored, but more importantly, some doors, once opened, can never be closed again.