The Last Night at Tremore Beach Review: The Disturbing and Engaging Journey of a Sublime Javier Rey?
Cast: Javier Rey, Ana Polvorosa, Pilar Castro, Guillermo Toledo, Josean Bengoetxea
Director: Oriol Paulo
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and a half stars)
The great Spanish director Oriol Paulo is back on Netflix with the miniseries The Last Night at Tremore Beach, which adapts the small screen the best-selling psychological thriller by Mikel Santiago, published in 2014. Bringing such a complex story to video was not easy, but the filmmaker, already known for having successfully tackled the film adaptation of When God Learned to Write (2022), once again demonstrates his ability to probe the depths of the human mind. Although some changes to the source material, such as the nationalities of the characters, their names, and the setting moved from the Irish coast to the Cantabrian coast in the fictional town of Tremor, the series maintains intact the suspenseful atmosphere and the constant sense of menace that characterize the book. With acclaimed titles such as Killer in Suburbia, The Invisible Guest, and Mirage, Oriol Paulo confirms himself as a guarantee of quality.
From the first minute, The Last Night at Tremore Beach envelops the viewer in an atmosphere that is disturbing and keeps you in suspense, on a journey where nothing is as it seems and every subplot, every character, plays with time – past, and present, and future – to lead the audience beyond appearances. Are you looking for the perfect TV series or movie to watch on Netflix this weekend but don’t know what to choose? We’ll help you with our usual appointment with streaming recommendations for the weekend. Among the countless new proposals that Netflix gives us every week, choosing a TV series or a movie and above all getting everyone to agree is not that simple. Here are some useful tips to help you choose which series or movie to watch streaming on this new weekend that goes from October 25 to 27, 2024.
The Last Night at Tremore Beach Review: The Story Plot
Álex is a man punished by life: despite having achieved enormous success with his career as a pianist and composer of film soundtracks, he is gripped by a very serious artist’s block, to which is added a hostile divorce that has led him to settle far from everything… even from his children, whom he loves and misses so much. Tremor is the place where he chooses to rediscover inspiration and enthusiasm for life. He moves to an isolated house where an ornithologist once stayed, with only one other house nearby: that of Leo and María, an unusual married couple, also looking for the peace that the area offers.
Shortly after his arrival, Alex meets Judy, a woman marked by a painful past who opens her arms to him and with whom he immediately connects. However, nothing will be easy on Alex’s path. One night, during a storm, he is struck by lightning which makes him lose his sense of reality. From that moment on, he begins to suffer from terrible visions in the form of lucid dreams in which he witnesses helplessly the brutal murder of his neighbors and all his loved ones. His furious behavior will lead him to investigate his relationship with his mother, who claims to have an “instinct” for predicting the future. Did he inherit it from her? Is it a gift or a curse?
The Last Night at Tremore Beach Review and Analysis
The Last Night at Tremore Beach is about death, rebirth, second chances, destiny, and free will. In the 8 films that tell us Alex’s story, we find the reason for this forced narrative length: the story is so long and complex that it changes. Several times. There are so many narrative twists of the puzzle, as Alex calls them—and the interesting thing is that it is precisely the narrative twists that determine the course of the characters’ lives, but also of our lives. Going to a certain place at a certain time. Deciding to be with a person or leave them. Following the wishes of your parents or rebelling, doing your own thing. They are all choices. Not all twists are unexpected. As often happens, we understand many facts before the protagonist does. Simply because ours is an external point of view, emotionally uninvolved. But it is destined to become so.
This too will be a choice. Everything that happens to us is a choice… Except the things that do not depend on us. The things that are other people’s choices. The events that we suffer because they depend on someone else. From bad luck, from coincidence, from fate if one decides to believe it. But regardless of whether the viewer believes it or not, that sense of inevitability becomes more and more pressing, as the story progresses. We feel frustrated as if they don’t believe us rather than Alex. We feel helpless as he hesitates, wasting precious time. The Last Night at Tremore Beach slowly creeps into our feelings, becoming so engaging that we want to scream at the television the same things that viewers screamed at the characters on the screen in theaters all those years ago. Run. Run. Get out of there. Just like Alex, we feel crushed by something much bigger than us and all the characters. Because we are inside the story, in Tremor. And the weight we feel is that of the unstoppable.
Two characters use the term unstoppable, and it is no coincidence. Because destiny is the only thing that is truly unstoppable. The future is written. Nothing we do can allow us to escape it, except one thing: the luck of having a second chance. Not everyone has one. It is reserved for a few. But on The Last Night at Tremore Beach, and again not by chance, all the protagonists were offered one. Or they earned it with blood and pain. It doesn’t matter if they had it. They all ended up taking advantage of it by going to Tremor, a small town where you don’t expect surprises, with breathtaking landscapes and an open-air life, smelling the scent of the sea. The perfect place to start over. But when someone tries to change their destiny, they hesitate because of someone else. Sense of responsibility, unconsciousness, guilt. There are many reasons. Including those that guide the choices of the protagonists in this story.
A cumbersome figure like Alex’s mother, who determines the course of so many lives with her own blind will, is not easy to handle. Not even for us. Not only that. When several people, with such different stories, find each other and intertwine their lives during their second chance, something can go wrong. Because our room for maneuvering ends where that of others begins. I don’t want to tell you anything about the plot, on the contrary: I suggest you just start watching, without investigating the story and its protagonists. You will quickly understand if The Last Night at Tremore Beach is for you or not. And if you have faith, even if you foresee some events and some connections, you will discover with surprise that this does not change or invalidate the red thread that ties the whole cause-effect sequence. Between the present, past and future.
Landscapes, aesthetics, plot: everything in The Last Night at Tremore Beach is taken care of in the smallest details to offer a high-quality television experience. Photography, soundtrack, shots, and editing combine perfectly, creating an atmosphere of mystery, intrigue, and disorientation that unfolds through trauma and love, the true threads of the story. At the center of the narrative, as we were saying, is Álex de la Fuente, played by Javier Rey, who carries the weight of the series on his shoulders with an intense performance full of emotional nuances. The protagonist is a man marked by a tormented past, determined to turn the page, but his inner journey pushes him to emotional extremes that reveal a profound complexity: Rey embodies this fragility with extraordinary authenticity, giving life to a character capable of moving effortlessly from tenderness to fear, from security to uncertainty, to paranoia.
The soundtrack, by Fernando Velázquez, plays a fundamental role at the diegetic level: at times it awakens the protagonist’s memories, at other times it completes and enriches the images or accompanies them with virtuosity. Music thus becomes a pillar of the narration, associating itself with characters and key moments and generating intense emotions in the audience. Oriol Paulo also makes the most of the settings, capturing their beauty on the screen but showing the characters as small and vulnerable in the face of wild nature. This human fragility, together with the personal dramas that accompany each character in this story of second chances, makes it easy for the viewer to identify with the character: the Cantabrian coast is the perfect setting because here, as in the protagonist’s mind, the storm and the calm, the light and the darkness, the beautiful and the dark meet.
Oriol Paulo always elevates the stories he decides to adapt for television, deepening characters and situations to the point of creating, in this case, real “films” within the series. Some key characters could even inspire spin-offs, given their narrative depth. Contrary to what often happens in other series, where flashbacks and filler episodes weigh down the narrative without adding value, from our point of view here every digression enriches the plot. Paulo manages to perfectly balance moments of suspense with explorations of the past, making every detail significant and engaging for the viewer. Having overcome what could be considered an obstacle for those accustomed to the faster format of Netflix and other platforms, The Last Night at Tremore Beach still proves to be an intriguing thriller, which drags the viewer on a journey into the protagonist’s mind, as if in a labyrinth with no way out.
The Last Night at Tremore Beach Review: The Last Words
If you are a fan of The Last Night at Tremore Beach, you will be unable to put it down until the end: the series is built to be highly engaging, weaving a sequence of twists and turns that keep the viewer glued to the screen. Tells the story of Alex (a very good and engaging Javier Rey), a composer in a crisis who moves north, to the coast, to start over. But after a lifetime of being told that the future is written and cannot be changed, it will not be easy for him to even think about being able to succeed. In a tense tale of death, rebirth, and second chances, The Last Night at Tremore Beach immerses us in a breathtakingly beautiful place to make us reflect on the concept of destiny. And how free will influence it.
The Last Night at Tremore Beach Review: The Disturbing and Engaging Journey of a Sublime Javier Rey? - Filmyhype
Director: Oriol Paulo
Date Created: 2024-10-27 18:36
3.5
Pros
- The mystery at the heart of the plot is handled with great skill.
- An absolutely inspired cast
- Oriol Paulo confirms that he handles the thriller brilliantly
Cons
- The excessive length of the episodes, which seem like films within the film rather than successive chapters of a story
