Summary
It relies on the human need of requiring answers but it also expects too much from the audience which labours the second half of the film
This review of Netflix film Offering to the Storm (Ofrenda a la tormenta) contains no spoilers. The thriller was released on July 24, 2020.
Following on from Legacy of the Bones, Offering to the Storm arrives gracefully on Netflix to complete the Baztan Trilogy in all its glory — a two hour and twenty-minute film that brings the story full circle. Like the last instalment, this Netflix film requires an ounce of concentration as it veers the viewers down a murky depressing landscape, relying on the crippling and unanswered past of Amaia Salazar.
The third film in the trilogy has the investigation rummaging for evidence after several suspicious and horrific infant deaths that revolve around witch-like rituals. Offering to the Storm brings a higher meaning of sacrifice — whereby sacrificing infants means a gratifying award of various wealth and life forms. It’s eeriness compounds the story’s need to keep the mystery in a box while Amaia Salazar navigates closer to the truth. The third film relies on a full-circle view, frustrating the investigator as she struggles to come to terms with her purpose.
And there are plenty of themes, including how Amaia has reached this stage of her life, but Offering to the Storm compounds the lead character’s problems with a desperate need to numb the pain and battle her marriage on the sidelines. There doesn’t appear to be the light at the end of the tunnel for the beloved character, who consumes the audience with this seeming emptiness and the need to chase demons rather than let the past die.
Offering to the Storm props the audience to expect an overwhelming answer to everything which is part of the trilogy’s success. It relies on the human need of requiring answers — and also that need is masked by the operational role the lead characters partake in, it’s meaning and message runs far deeper.
But like the second installment, Offering to the Storm expects too much from the audience which labors the second half of the film. It becomes convoluted by its own style. It’s far better than the middling middle film, however, with a sense of conclusion heading the character’s way. Netflix has a three-film trilogy nestled in its thumbnails and that’s hardly a bad thing.
