Stream It or Skip It: ‘The Warning’ on Netflix Intertwines Math and Murder

Netflix carries on with their foreign-language offerings this week with The Warning, a Spanish thriller that twists and bends back on itself in an attempt to keep the viewer on its toes. How successful is the film’s attempt to terrify through math (and moths)? Let’s find out.

THE WARNING: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Jon (Raúl Arévalo) and his best pal, David (Sergio Mur) hop into a convenience store one night, just as David is planning to propose to his girlfriend. But after a robbery attempt, David ends up in a coma, and Jon is distraught and possibly sliding back into the mental illness he’s trying to keep at bay. Meanwhile, in a parallel storyline happening 10 years later, a young boy named Nico (Hugo Arbues) is getting bullied by his classmates. One day, after the bullies try to force him to shoplift a magazine from a convenience store that seems very familiar, Nico finds a note that tells him never to return to the store or he will be killed.

Director Daniel Calparsoro then begins tightening the screws; Jon reads about how the store where David was shot has been the site of several previous murders. As Jon digs ever more obsessively into those cases, we begin to see how Nico’s story — and his note — tie in. The ages of the perpetrators, victims, and witnesses all become important as there seems to be a numerological bent to these recurring killings. Jon gets ever more urgent as he tries to prevent a future killing, all while his friend’s life hangs by a thread.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Any movie that ties in numerology and predictions of terrible fates will always remind us of Jim Carrey’s notorious The Number 23, where everything in life could be translated into numbers, chopped up, divided, and multiplied until you got the number 23. It was an obsessive compulsive’s wet dream, though not that good of a movie.

The convenience store violence that kicks off the movie might remind you of another Netflix offering this year, the horror flick The Ritual. And then there are the moths. The moths! Perhaps because this isn’t an American film and there are degrees of separation between Spanish and American films, or perhaps it’s just a brazen act of homage. For whatever reason — none of which have anything to do with the plot — The Warning chooses moths and moth larvae as a creepy-ass motif, in a blatant rip-off of The Silence of the Lambs. And if you think I’m reaching, check out the poster:

The death’s head moth! How is that image not copyrighted??

Performance Worth Watching: As David’s girlfriend — who’s desperately hoping he’ll pull through and increasingly angry at Jon for his insistence on blabbering on about numbers and premonitions — Belén Cuesta is doing some fantastic work. All of the movie’s emotional high points belong to her.

Single Best Shot: How about some more moths and larvae for your nerves?? Huh??

Our Take: For a movie that seeks to keep you guessing, The Warning gives you a remarkably clear map to the road ahead. That’s not necessarily a complaint, but if you’re looking for a thriller that will surprise you at every turn, this won’t. But it’s a well-acted and surprisingly affecting thriller, all things considered, and a satisfying mystery, if not a shocking one.

Our Call: Stream it. Hey, why not?

Stream The Warning on Netflix