Tin & Tina 2023 Movie Review
Going to the cinema to see a horror movie in the middle of spring and not on a summer night or around Halloween is perceived with a somewhat strange or strange feeling. Perhaps it is true that there are more propitious times for certain genres, but the date on which the premiere of ‘Tin & Tina’ fell seems to me most appropriate. Now that everyone is getting ready to take pictures of the flowers, to start sunbathing and peacefully enjoying terraces with vermouth, comes this film that seeks to get us into a rather rarefied and cold environment. No doubt external factors are going to help viewers get a good grip on the uncomfortable dynamics of Rubin Stein ‘s first feature film .
A first film that, as on so many other occasions, is part of a homonymous short. A work that in 2013 was the germ of a trilogy of shorts and a good track record at festivals. And as it also happens on many occasions, the leading performers have been changed. Current trends rule and a cast has been chosen that includes two rising artists such as Milena Smit and Jaime Lorente as headliners . They play two stepfathers who have adopted seven-year-old siblings (Tin and Tina, Carlos González Morollón and Anastasia Russo) .) with an angelic face but obviously, as it is a horror title, they hide something unhealthy inside that will make the couple’s crisis of faith even more relevant. I haven’t seen the short, this nearly two-hour opportunity is supposed to be ideal for developing the characters, but we know very little about their past or background.
Suspense, awkward rarities and eighties nostalgia are the main assets of ‘Tin & Tina’. The film follows in the footsteps of classic horror titles, especially those that include children in their cast. The direction of actors and photography is very successful in this sense and that is why it is easy to remember titles such as ‘The Devil’s Baby’, ‘The Prophecy’, ‘The Town of the Damned’ or ‘The Orphan’. The film is very reminiscent of Chicho Ibáñez Serrador and as in ‘Who can kill a child’, the protagonists have a reasonable doubt as to whether everything bad that happens to them is the result of bad luck or the devilish acts of some young women little people
The intention of the film is to make us uncomfortable and weird, but it makes us lose ourselves when it goes aimlessly or when things don’t add up. Do they do evil like antichrists or do they innocently misinterpret the biblical texts? Specifically, it happens that the feature film sometimes plays with the supernatural, and other times plays with prejudices or misunderstandings. For example, there is a dog and we all know what happens with pets in these kinds of movies. Also that they serve as a canary in the mine to warn of danger. This element clashes with the message that Stein finally leaves us in his closing. The script is not decided or they have not been able to capture in a more efficient way where they want to shoot.
The ‘Tin & Tina’ footage is full of Kubrickian shots, zooms like Donner or Friedkin. It also has Jocelyn Pook (‘Eyes wide shut’) for the soundtrack, which would have been quite a goal for the squad if the film wasn’t full of hackneyed angelic choirs that seek to instill terror from innocence. It is not that the sound editing crowded with poorly inserted effects or disjointed volumes that accompany two protagonists who seem to speak only in whispers help either. Even with these defects, ‘Tin & Tina’ is intriguing, and this is mainly thanks to the fact that its first act is disturbing, how it handles sacrilegious or religious themes, and the final touch is a magnificent and far from short sequence shot.
