Fantasia Fest 2021: ‘On the Third Day’ delights with fang-toothed fright

Non-linear storytelling is always a mixed bag — but director Daniel de la Vega uses it to unnerving effect with his new feature film On the Third Day, playing Fantasia Fest 2021. With a script co-written by Alberto Fasce and Gonzalo Ventura, frequently reapplies genre tricks and traditions to tell a briskly-paced and emotional story about human limits in the face of true evil. Feeling familiar (even particular moments emit a Don’t Look Now glow) yet uniquely thrilling, de la Vega’s latest keeps you glued to your seat until the end credits, which even roll like something ripped out of the 1970s.

The story follows Cecilia (Mariana Anghileri) and her son Martin (Octavio Belmonte) as they embark on a last-minute trip out of town. Cecilia struggles to navigate the waters of divorce, often coming to explosive blows with her ex-husband Fernando (Diego Cremonesi), who makes menacing remarks about his desire to see his son. In her perception, a getaway is exactly what her and Martin need. Meanwhile, Enrique, an older, god-fearing gentlemen, receives a phone call about a “cargo” shipment, soon to be revealed as a giant crate wrapped in chains, flecks of some unknown light squeezing through the cracks. As fate would have it, Cecilia and Enrique hop on the same highway, heading towards one another, later that night. When Cecilia ignores a young woman named Lucia (Verónica Intile), waving for assistance on the side of the road, she glances back at her sleeping son for a split second. That’s all the time it takes for her to swerve and crash head-on into Enrique’s pick-up truck.

The collision not only scatters our core characters, with Martin vanishing into thin air, but the contents of Enrique’s special delivery. Cecilia awakens disheveled and bloody on the property of an elderly couple and is soon transported to the local hospital, where she is patched up and given a bed in which to recuperate. But she doesn’t stay still for long, fearing for her safety and the whereabouts of her son. A detective Ricardo Ventura (Osvaldo Santoro) is hot on her trail as he attempts to put the very weird puzzle pieces together, especially as it has now been three days since the accident, strangely enough. Dr. Hernán Pastori (Lautaro Delgado Tymruk) offers to help Cecilia in any way he can, so he enlists the guidance of a colleague named Noriega (Osmar Nuñez). In a surreal hypnosis session, the shattered pieces of Cecilia’s memory of the last three days slowly emerge out of a dense fog, each jagged bit bringing her trauma into focus. Even more, the pale-skinned creature, not unlike Nosferatu, which Enrique had been harboring, becomes a crucial component to Cecilia’s tragic, devastating story.

On the Third Day doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it doesn’t dismantle genre tropes and conventions to rebuild into its own wily and exciting beast. Heavy on lush composition and style, feeling both classic and contemporary, it’s the sort of horror film that has just enough chills to give you frost bite.

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