Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Offering to the Storm’ on Netflix, the Final Convoluted Chapter in the Relentlessly Gloomy ‘Baztan Trilogy’

Offering to the Storm (Ofrenda a la Tormenta), the third film in the Baztan Trilogy, arrives on Netflix a few months after its predecessor The Legacy of the Bones grimmed us the eff out with all its death and baby skeletons and subsequent procedural turmoil. Those of us enamored by this series’ serial Satanic sacrifice and related shenanigans are no doubt clamoring to see intrepid homicide detective Amaia Salazar figure out who lurketh behind the light-devouring curtains of this plot, which at long last, and after countless ratatat twists and developments, comes to an end.

OFFERING TO THE STORM: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: The movie starts off just swimmingly, with a man smothering an infant in a crib with a stuffed bear. There’s a foot chase and as always, Amaia (once again played by Marta Etura) is exactly where the plot needs her to be. Another day, another dead baby for this superstar cop hot on the trail of an ancient demon known as Inguma, who demands sacrifice and whose inspiration of cult leaders and their followers prompts the local Basque cop force to parse the differences between Satanism and witchcraft. Of course, she can’t hold any seances, so she has to stick with whack-a-moling the beast’s human minions — and maybe the demon is a delusion anyway? Who knows. Anyway, all of this gruesomeness has something to do with Amaia’s mother, who you’ll recall disappeared at the end of Legacy of the Bones and is now presumed dead despite the lack of a body. Although her family goes ahead with the funeral arrangements, Amaia knows better.

So with this latest delightful infanticide, the case heats up, and the 10,000-piece puzzle of this trilogy’s plot comes down to catching each tidbit as they’re fired at you at about 400 rounds per mintue. There is too much to convey even without remotely spoiling anything, so I’ll reduce it as follows: This all is bad, and it has to stop.

OK, I’ll elucidate slightly: The people who killed babies became wealthy and successful afterwards. Amaia has to stop this madness despite a growing mound of conflicts of interest. Amaia’s twin sister is one of those sets of bones that aren’t in the crypts where they’re supposed to be, and boy, are there a lot of crypts being plumbed in this movie. Crypt after crypt after crypt. It’s crypt-o-riffic. The local judge, Juez Markina (Leonardo Sbaraglia), grants Amaia warrants and such, but what he’d really like to be granting her is best left to the Penthouse forum. Amaia has a baby of her own who her mother almost sacrificed to the underworld in the last movie, which is probably supposed to haunt the living shit out of her, but no, she barrels forward, following clue after clue and giving order after order to her fellow detectives in a quest for closure while the rain batters them all, cold, damp, relentless.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, The Da Vinci Code, Tales from the Crypt Presents: Demon Knight and really, any movie with crypts in it.

Performance Worth Watching: Etura, master of the teeth-clenched sideways glance, hasn’t cracked a smile at all this ridiculousness for 389 minutes worth of movie. Somebody give her an honorary Golden Globe.

Memorable Dialogue: “Around midnight, Yolanda Berrueta blew up her children’s grave to see if they were alive. Apparently she found an old shipment of explosives in some mines belonging to her family. She detonated the explosives, but it didn’t work. She went up to see what happened and it blew up in her face. Two fingers were blown off. They found another two stuck to a crypt across the way. And she lost one eye.” — an officer briefs Amaia on a throwaway plot point with a speech I want embroidered on a pillow for the guest room

Sex and Skin: Post-coital toplessness and rear-view bottomlessness.

Our Take: As he did in the previous Baztan outing, Fernando Gonzalez Molina directs Offering like it’s an attempt at the land speed record. That is, until a development at the halfway point, when it slows to a crawl for a half-hour of maudlin soap operatics, then stomps on the gas for a lickety-split hysterical overwrought violent and very very wet finale. That way, the movie can be ridiculously detailed of plot AND rife with melodramatic grandiosity, while doing neither particularly well. There’s a lot of tell and not enough show, and when there is indeed some show, it’s slick, silly and professional. “You can’t say it’s boring,” I said of Legacy of the Bones, and I can almost say that this time. Almost.

Based on detective novels by Dolores Redondo, the trilogy emulates the page-turner mechanics of modern pulp: Who cares about logic when a relentless pace prevents us from asking too many questions and popping the precarious bubble of the plot. Or getting too annoyed about Benn Northover’s — in a thankless role as Amaia’s husband James — pinewood performance. Or noticing how the series dabbles in the taboo without being particularly provocative. Or rolling our eyes too hard at lines like “A century ago more people here believed in witches than the Holy Trinity,” and “Why are you going to your mother’s funeral? You know she’s not dead.” Molina crafts a shield against in-the-moment nitpicking more than a narrative.

Offering to the Storm has the added burden of braiding dozens upon dozens of exponentially tangled plot threads into one rope to hang the bad guy, and frankly, it fails. I’m not certain everything is resolved — although it doesn’t have to be, as real life reminds us with alarming regularity. But this is pop fiction, and one of pop fiction’s basic tenets is that closure is achievable. I’m not sure if everything is even clearly communicated in the explosive final moments, although by then, I had been so battered with developments, I had ceased my emotional and intellectual involvement, and even my detached bemusement had long ago stolen out the front door for a breath of fresh air. It’s a dissatisfying and anticlimactic movie that still manages to run us through the ringer. If intensity without sense is OK with you, then by all means, watch it.

Our Call: SKIP IT. Of course, if you’ve watched the first two films, obligation may compel you to see it through. But remember, obligation only rarely results in fun.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Offering to the Storm on Netflix