Arrebato is a late 70’s Spanish film that sits somewhere between drama, drug-fuelled & sweaty fantasy, and low-key horror. It’s a film that seemingly slowly but surely sucks you into its damaged & off-kilter world- making you wonder what is real, and what is not, and where sanity begins & ends.  The film regards a low-budget horror filmmaker, getting pulled into the world of a troubled twenty-something man- who may/ may not be having something supernatural going on in his life. Here as a joint release between Radiance Films & Altered Innocence- is a recent Blu-Ray release, of this strange unease trip of a film. With a new 4k scan, a new commentary track, and a few archive extras.

Arrebato (aka Rapture ) is from the year 1979. It was written/ directed by Iván Zulueta- he had a total of fifteen credits to his name, taking in thirteen shorts & TV episodes, and two feature lengths- taking in the film-to-hand & musical comedy Un, dos, tres... al escondite inglés(1970).  And it’s fair to say Arrebato very much skirts between more formal filmmaking, and arthouse fare.

The film opens with someone packing up a film reel, a cassette tape, and a key- which is finished off with a wax stamp. Then we shift to our lead character José(Eusebio Poncela) a starting to bald thirtysomething horror director, who is trying to get his second film started after putting the finish touches to his first film.  He makes his way back to his city apartment where the caretaker hands him the package we saw getting packed up- he also lets him know that his on/off girlfriend  Anna( Cecilia Roth) is back in his apartment.

He finds her passed out, and this pushes him to get high on heroin. He unwraps the package- and starts playing the cassette-it features a gravely gruff-voiced man, who turns out to be Pedro(Will More) a twenty-seven-year-old man he met when looking for filming locations. It’s said Pedro has the mindset of a twelve-year-old- but it’s he’s also mentally unwell, obsessed with filming himself, and his life in the isolated house he lives in with his rather peculiar mother.

To start with the film is a blend of flashbacks & José drug-fuelled days in his apartment with Anna. At first, we go right the way back to when José first meets Pedro- detailing his erratic & strange behaviour, as well, of course, his darting and odd short films. At a point in our story, he moves from the house to a city apartment alone. With Pedro’s move, he starts filming himself, often asleep, getting the film processed the next day- he starts to believe that something/ someone is visiting him while he’s in slumber. And this is mainly what makes up the footage he’s sent José.

Visually & sonically Arrebato gets more disorientating & unhinged as it unfolds- with a mix of different types of film stock/ quality, close-ups, and strange visual counterbalances. It features a blend of formally dramatic soundtracking, playful-but-sinister electronica, drones with sudden noise pitch dwells, and the odd touches of new wave/ punk music.

The cast is fairly small, and really all of it is on point. We of course have More as the odd man-child Pedro, who shifts between being downright creepy, playful childlike, and haunting/ disturbed. Poncela portal of film-maker José features an effective character arch, as he goes from being relatively sane, though to decidedly unbalanced. Also, worth a mention is Marta Fernández Muro as Marta Pedro’s bubbly & bright cousin.

Arrebato does feel like a drug trip distilled into cinematic form. We start with its slow but strange rise, and slowly but surely things get more unhinged & off-kilter. The moments of uneasy/ growing horror initially seem to be of a human origin, but the deeper you get in the more you start to wonder if there is truly something supernatural going on here.

Moving onto this region free disc. And we get a 4k restoration scan of the film- this looks very good, really enhances the switch between different film stock, and the general feeling of descending in tripped-outness. We get a new commentary track from  Mike White of The Projection Booth podcast, and this is well worth a play- as it’s well-researched, and sees him giving his takes on some of the more confusing elements of the film. He starts off by talking about how Arrebato is sadly just a footnote in many books about Spanish film, and how he first came across the film himself.  He touches on the career of actor Will More- who was actually the age of 30 in the film, though looks just past his teen years. He talks about how the film is difficult to tie down into a single genre- with its mix of mystery, horror, and tripped-out cinema. We get a bio of lead actor Eusebio Poncela- who had quite a prolific career. He discusses the birth of punk rock in Spain in the late 70s, and how this trigged off other art. He gives more bios as actors as they appear. Later on, he discusses the director's output, and talks about some of the more confusing elements in the film. He points out great examples of Spanish punk music in the film, and the use of time in the movie.

Otherwise, we get Ivan Z( 52.28) this is a 2004 documentary regarding director Iván Zulueta- it was helmed by short & music video director Andrés Duque. This brings together lengthy interviews with the director, in and around his home. snippets of film work in general, and of course Arrebato. It’s a Spanish language film, with sub-titles- it’s an interesting enough doc, though at times does become a tad pretentious, and a little artily messy in its presentation. Lastly, we get a trailer. The finished release comes with a slip that takes in original poster artwork- this is ltd to just a 1000 copies, so it’s best to act sooner than later if you want to score a copy of this Blu-Ray.

In finishing, Arrebato is a decidedly heady & affecting film, which pulls one into its sinisterly tripped-out & strange world. If you enjoy where formal film-making meets uneasy arthouse cinema- this is most certainly a must!