Last Stop: Rocafort St.

It is like Barcelona’s version of Kisaragi Station, the supposedly haunted Japanese train station that has become the stuff of urban legend, even though it never really existed. Haunted or not, Rocafort Street has undeniably become a magnet for suicides. That would have been a good question to for Laura to have asked about during her interview. However, she needs this job as the station’s night attendant, so she stays long enough to witness a suicide. She then sees a lot more after that in Luis Prieto’s Last Stop: Rocafort St., which releases this Friday on VOD.

As we witness during the prologue, it wasn’t just suicides that happened in the Rocafort stop. It was there that notorious serial killer Elias Soro killed his final victims. The investigating detective, Roman Azpuru tried to stop him, but things turned out badly for everyone, including the disgraced Azpuru.

Nevertheless, Laura turns to Azpuru after witnessing a train engineer’s suicide. The distraught man told her not to look, but she did so anyway. Now she is seeing grotesque visions of the victim and perhaps the gory fates of others around her. There also seems to be a devil dog haunting the lower tracks, but when you see him, you’re really done for—because he is like Cerberus.

Initially, Prieto and co-screenwriters Ivan Ledesma and Angel Agudo follow the playbook of Asian horror films riffing on the Kisaragi mythos, like the Korean Ghost Station. However, they add elements of Aztec death cult mythology that probably appeals to Spain’s colonial guilt, but also distinguishes Rocafort from other haunted station films, like The Sound (which featured Toronto’s infamous Lower Bay subway stop).

Javier Gutierrez is also terrific as the hard-drinking, hardboiled Azpuru. He certainly puts the “anti” in antihero. He is a mess, in a highly credible, consistently entertaining way. Awkwardly, Natalia Azahara is a bit too mousy and milquetoast as Laura. Frankly, her freakouts are rather dull and perfunctory. However, Celso Bugallo is suitably sinister as evil old Soro.

Regardless, Preto maintains a consistently creepy atmosphere and introduces plenty of weird little wrinkles into the seemingly familiar story. Ironically, it might even be scarier for New Yorks, because it ties in to the current zeitgeist regarding subway safety anxiety—concerns that our elected officials would rather address with gaslighting than serious problem solving. Recommended as a solid Spanish horror movie that takes care of genre business, Last Stop: Rocafort St. releases this Friday (10/24) on VOD.