... doesn't stick the landing.
Basically, "El Muerto" is about a young girl who doesn't know she's dead. And comes back to the morgue where her mother works every year, to try to tell her mother that she doesn't hate her for the argument they had before the girl died.
So it's "The Sixth Sense". But we get a ghost boy, and Antonio the helpful morgue attendant who can see Laura and is apparently some kind of afterlife guide. Both of these are added because the two sentence horror story that is the basis for the episode isn't enough to generate a full 20-minute episode. Which doesn't come as a surprise: most of them aren't. But usually the production staff pads out the two-sentence concept with 19 minutes and 30 seconds of something that has nothing to do with the two sentences.
The two sentences here are pretty effective ("Alone in the morgue, I hear little footsteps. My daughter has finally come back to me.") and at least the episode is accurate to the sentences. But the production staff and writers Lucy Luna and Carlos Foglia toss on more and more and more. So what should have been a five-minute episode is extended out to 20.
And a lot of it is either meaningless (why does the boy keep going after Laura) or unexplained. Like what the heck is Antonio? Unlike most "Two-Sentence" episodes, I'd like to know what is going on. But just when "El Muertos" is getting interesting, it... ends.
The performances by Isla Sunar as Laura, and Carlos Albernoz as Antonio, are good. Even Michelle Arivzu as the grief-stricken Grace is good. And the concept is worthy of a "Twilight Zone" episode. Heck, it's only a half-step away from "Nothing in the Dark", if you wonders where the "Sixth Sense" concept probably came from.
And the writers and production staff have to go for an ambiguous ending at the end. With a little girl (presumably ghost) in a morgue drawer asking where she is and trying to get out. Because we can't have happy endings on "Two Sentence". Which is as much a trope as anything the show gets into. Is it just modern-day horror, that there can't be happy endings. Granted, the end isn't an "unhappy" ending like many episodes. But if the episode had ended 30 seconds earlier with Antonio leading Laura off, I wouldn't have been heartbroken.
And who, or what, is locking Laura in morgue drawers? Is it the little girl we hear at the end? Or is the little girl Laura? Did Grace have to autopsy her own daughter? Yuck. And the dead boy's father? Where was he when his son was asphyxiating in the back of a delivery truck? Antonio says that it wasn't abandonment... but it sure sounds like it to me.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
Basically, "El Muerto" is about a young girl who doesn't know she's dead. And comes back to the morgue where her mother works every year, to try to tell her mother that she doesn't hate her for the argument they had before the girl died.
So it's "The Sixth Sense". But we get a ghost boy, and Antonio the helpful morgue attendant who can see Laura and is apparently some kind of afterlife guide. Both of these are added because the two sentence horror story that is the basis for the episode isn't enough to generate a full 20-minute episode. Which doesn't come as a surprise: most of them aren't. But usually the production staff pads out the two-sentence concept with 19 minutes and 30 seconds of something that has nothing to do with the two sentences.
The two sentences here are pretty effective ("Alone in the morgue, I hear little footsteps. My daughter has finally come back to me.") and at least the episode is accurate to the sentences. But the production staff and writers Lucy Luna and Carlos Foglia toss on more and more and more. So what should have been a five-minute episode is extended out to 20.
And a lot of it is either meaningless (why does the boy keep going after Laura) or unexplained. Like what the heck is Antonio? Unlike most "Two-Sentence" episodes, I'd like to know what is going on. But just when "El Muertos" is getting interesting, it... ends.
The performances by Isla Sunar as Laura, and Carlos Albernoz as Antonio, are good. Even Michelle Arivzu as the grief-stricken Grace is good. And the concept is worthy of a "Twilight Zone" episode. Heck, it's only a half-step away from "Nothing in the Dark", if you wonders where the "Sixth Sense" concept probably came from.
And the writers and production staff have to go for an ambiguous ending at the end. With a little girl (presumably ghost) in a morgue drawer asking where she is and trying to get out. Because we can't have happy endings on "Two Sentence". Which is as much a trope as anything the show gets into. Is it just modern-day horror, that there can't be happy endings. Granted, the end isn't an "unhappy" ending like many episodes. But if the episode had ended 30 seconds earlier with Antonio leading Laura off, I wouldn't have been heartbroken.
And who, or what, is locking Laura in morgue drawers? Is it the little girl we hear at the end? Or is the little girl Laura? Did Grace have to autopsy her own daughter? Yuck. And the dead boy's father? Where was he when his son was asphyxiating in the back of a delivery truck? Antonio says that it wasn't abandonment... but it sure sounds like it to me.
But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong. What do you think?
