You Are Not Me (aka Tú no eres yo) (2023) 

A young woman travels back to her country to visit her parents for Christmas with her girlfriend and their son, soon finding out that something odd is going when a new woman is introduced as her parents’ daughter. 

Written and directed by Marisa Crespo and Moisés Romera, this holiday-set thriller knows exactly how to create tension, play with reality, and make the viewer question what is going on. The writing is tight, the direction works well, the dialog (in the subtitles at least) sounds realistic. It’s the kind of movie that takes place at Christmas for a practical reason and not just to shoehorn the celebrations in. The celebrations here are a part of the plot and the reason for the visit. The thriller aspect here works well, the twist near the end also works well if not a little predictable as the film gets closer to it. Overall, solid writing and strong direction that make the film truly entertaining.  

The cast here is on point with performances that range from paranoid to scheming, giving the viewer something to pay attention to no matter what is going on in the story and on the screen. The performances are nuances and natural as a whole. The lead, Roser Tapias is fantastic as Aitana, the center of the story and the one person who has the most screen time. She makes the most of it and pulls the viewer into the story and into her performance, bringing them along for the ride as she gets more and more scared and panicked. She makes the viewer feel as she does, increasing the stress as the story moves along. Playing her spouse Gabi is Yapoena Silva who brings a sort of balance to things with a more loving and understanding approach to the situation which may not be the best option here. The rest of the cast here is good as well, playing people who are either being gaslit or who are gaslighting others. The ensemble cast here is strong and thus creates a film that grabs the viewer and doesn’t let them go until the credits roll. 

The cinematography that surrounds the cast and the story, creating images that are carefully calculated and filmed by directory of photography Víctor Entrecanales (and team). The images here are focused with a specific goal in mind, one of make the viewer question the story as much as the lead character does, and it achieves it quite well. The look of the film here is just right, using the house and its attached tower really well, making use of the darkness to the story’s advantage, and really pushing it all during the party and the last 10 to 20 minutes. Adding to this work the editing by Moisés Romera helps set the mood by cutting the scenes at just the right moments, letting the audience see what they think they saw and leaving them to question what it is they saw. 

You Are Not Me is a solid Christmas thriller, one that takes the usual family gatherings the holidays bring and turns them on their heads to make for a creepy evening with more darkness than light, both in the actual lighting and in the story. This is a strong film with a good payoff, a little bit of scares, a whole lot of creepy, and some truly disturbing old folks in the second half. This movie delivers what it promises without shying away from the harder subjects at hand here.  

Trigger warning: Ableism, racism, homophobia