After a stonking first episode that hurled everything but the kitchen sink at an unprepared audience, it’s time for 30 Coins to settle into something approaching a steady rhythm as it heads into the meat of its first season and with Ouija, it seems to be tackling that Steve of small-town weirdness that’s popped up in everything from Twin Peaks to American Gothic (remember that?). It’s a tried and true formula that usually drip feeds us a weekly adventure whole slowly opening the aperture of a larger plot and Alex de la Iglesia’s majestically twisted show doesn’t exactly deviate from it; but after an opening episode that saw a rampaging spider/baby attack our leads from a house full of knitted, wool cobwebs, I’m willing to stick with anything the show has to deliver.
However, can a show as seemingly innovative as 30 Coins manage to do anything new with a plot device as overused as a Ouija board?
After the whole “baby incident”, life pretty much has returned back to normal in the remote town of Pedraza and despite the presence of spider monsters, demonic possession and rumours of a human baby born of a cow, everyone has excepted some sort of logical explanation. This obviously pisses of a battered and bruised Elena who was literally there through the entire ordeal, but while she is understandably enraged by this mixture of cover-up and wilful ignorance, fellow witness Mayor Paco, is just thankful no bad press is blighting his town.
A month passes and Elena finds herself back chatting with Pedraza’s prodigal son, the dashing and wealthy Roque, who has recently returned and once ran against Paco for Mayor. Still trying to make sense of everything she’s seen so far, she’s still in possession of the strange, old, coin that once belonged to the even stranger town priest, Padre Manuel Vergara, who was instrumental in covering up all the baby monster stuff, but soon her attention is drawn to another strange occurrence that happens in town.
After a bunch of local kids go to the local graveyard and start dicking around with a Ouija board, one of their number, the vunerable Sole, suddenly vanishes without a trace. While a search party turns up nothing, Elena presses one of the kids for info and discovers that the entity they were talking to was named Giacomo, the same name as the child who died years earlier during the same failed exorcism that got Vergara jailed and exiled.
After trying the Ouija board again, Sole is returned, but is noticably changed by her experience. Not only can she see auras around people that signify when they’re going to die, but voices from beyond are urging her to obtain Vergara’s coin by any means necessary – including self mutilation.
But what does this have to do with the Pope…?
While noticably of a smaller scale than the previous episode, the second installment of 30 Coins drops most of the overtly fucked-up stuff we witnessed before and gets to the business in putting a dramatic new spin on something of an overused horror trope – the humble Ouiji board. For time immemorial, horror flicks have used this insidious little board game to kick off many a misadventure when a quick bash on Screwball Scramble or Mousetrap could have provided all of the stress with none of the danger, but Alex de la Iglesia manages to weave what seems like a “spooky occurrence of the week” sort of deal deftly into the greater plot.
Focusing mainly on Elena’s determination to work out what the hell happened with the monster baby in the face of a town who has already written her off as crazy due to her missing husband, the show not only sees her wade directly into another unearthly happening, but it adds significantly to her character as it goes. Firstly, the unspoken attraction that her and Paco obviously have is already palpable, but with the addition of the equally dashing (and single) Roque to the mix, the reluctantly broken eye contact and lingering stares increase greatly. Also, in the face of surviving a spider/baby attack, the veterinarian is proving herself as quite the Fox Mulder of supernatural bullshit as she hurls herself into the Ouija mystery without a second thought and even relates a telling tale concerning her own childhood Ouija conversations with a spirit named Chuqui. In a roundabout way, the episode suggests that Elena is as unwittingly connected with the supernatural as Vergara is, but is far more open about it while the boxing Padre doubles down on spreading misinformation in order to blur the truth.
However, that’s getting progressively tougher for the priest to do, especially seeing as the returned Sole is just as focused on retrieving the coin as the spider/baby was which ties everything together neatly.
Sole’s story is quite the interesting one as the abilities gained from her “disappearance” gives the the power to predict your death with results in a couple of predictions which prove to be instantly spot on and has gruesome The Omen/Final Destination style ramifications. It’s with this plot thread that I can see why de la Iglesia probably wanted to make 30 Coins in the first place as not only does allow him to revisit the past themes of his career (disgraced priests, social misfits, outlandish conspiracies), but it gives him carte blanche to put his own spin on numerous horror tropes in a single series.
Of course, while not as spectacular as the sight of a gangly-limbed humunculi kicking over an ambulance, Ouija still memorably manages to bring the pain in its third act which sees Sole, utterly consumed by spectral heckling make a bid for Elena’s coin by holding herself hostage as she horrifically removes a finger and threatens worse if Vergara doesn’t lead her to the trinket in question. While it isn’t anywhere near as batshit as the previous episode, the sight of a young, teenage girl putting a knife in her mouth and sloooooowy cutting through her cheek proves to be just as wince inducing as anything else in the series so far.
While the plot is rather neatly wrapped up, there’s still lashings of intrigue and questions still floating about the place such as what does the prologue concerning the friggin’ Pope have to do with anything and is it connected to the shadows of three ghostly priests we see who are the ones haunting Sole, is the religiously fanatical town idiot, Antonio, still seriously injured from his suicide attempt the new avatar for the coin hunting spirits? Does Elena’s strange past have anything to do with what’s going on now and will she be able to break through Vergara’s titanium facade and get him to admit something devilishly dangerous is actually amiss?
Two episodes in and I’m hooked like a damn fish…
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