Perry Kate Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

NekoHomey Purely Joyful Movie!

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Sarita Rafferty There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

gavin6942 A sensitive seven-year-old girl living a small village in 1940 rural Spain is traumatized after viewing James Whale's "Frankenstein" and drifts into her own fantasy world.This film has the distinguish of being one of the few films that was symbolic of life in Spain under General Franco... at least while Franco was still alive. There is so much with the beehive metaphor and the isolation...I wondered if this film in any way inspired Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth". Both have Spanish children with monstrous friends escaping the horrors of the dictatorship... And a quick search proves my hunch correct. Del Toro has said, "Spirit of the Beehive is one of those seminal movies that seeped into my very soul." Such praise!

jotix100 Victor Erice, the director of one of Spain's best films of all times, reminds this viewer of his American counterpart, Terence Malik, they do not have a long list of films in their resumes, but both have the capacity to create unusual films of unusual beauty, about unusual themes. It is certainly a loss for the audiences attracted to their work. Having seen this film years ago, the occasion for taking another view came when it was shown on a classic channel recently.At heart, "The Spirit of the Beehive" is about the terrifying effect on an impressionable young girl's of things happening around her in the Spain of 1940, right after the civil war and its devastating effects on the country. Ana and her sister Isabel are the daughters of parents who have stopped loving each other. It becomes clear Teresa, the mother is in love with a man who has disappeared from her life, but she keeps longing for his return. Fernando, the father, lives in his own world, surrounded by the bees he so lovingly keeps in his large estate.Ana and Teresa, like small children they are, love to get into things that normally would not be approved by their parents. Watching James Whale's "Frankenstein" at the makeshift city hall where the pictures are shown, has a profound effect on the girls. Ana and Teresa love straying from home, unsupervised, to the abandoned structure where they believe to be haunted. Ana, the bolder girl gets a big surprise as she surprises an escapee running from the law.Victor Erice shot this film in a Spain still under Franco's control, a daring move because of the reigning atmosphere in his native country. There is a lot of symbolism in the picture, although subtly done. Ana's fears are at the center of the story, but it has also a lot to do with the situation of the country in 1940, a sad period for the survivors of the civil war. The best thing is Ana Torrent whose innocence, expressive eyes, and her luminous presence works wonders to enhance the film. Fernando Fernan Gomez, a giant in the Spanish cinema gives a wonderful performance. Teresa Gimpera is effective as the wife and Isabel Telleria shows she was a natural as the other sister.Victor Erice showed why is one of Spain's most talented directors of all times.

Cosmoeticadotcom The Spirit Of The Beehive is an excellent and realistic portrait of childhood, with less Malickian mysticism and more realism; in that the 'realism' of a child is a different mysticism than 'adult' mysticism; or perhaps enchantment is a better term. That term also explains Ana's ideals about life, and why she stares at her father's glass beehive relentlessly, for she sees an order in it that is absent in her existence. This metaphor is far more cogent and powerful than the facile political connotations impugned. In fact, one can even argue that Ana's ordered home (replete with honeycomb shaped windows) and home life are manifestations of the beehive she loves, and, just as we view her with intent, so does she view and imbue the bees' lives. The outside world- politicized or not, by comparison, is no beehive, and things need to be ordered, by force, or by suppression- the elision of the drowning scene in Frankenstein is a good illustration of this for the diegesis of the film is her perspective, and she would likely close her eyes to that scene anyway, which is why the actual film also elides the dream sequence of Ana and the monster, as its hands seem to move to grab her.Watching films from certain periods in one's life, for the first time, is an odd experience, for often it is as if one is backfilling one's own past, altering it subtly as if one had experienced the recent past as a decades' old memory, as if it had been there all along. Throughout Erice's film, I had images and emotions of what my own existence in 1973, the year of the The Spirit Of The Beehive's release, was but, alack, in real life, I am an Isabel, not an Ana, thus I can discern the real from the irreal. On the positive side, when I state that Victor Erice's debut film is a cinema masterpiece and classic, you can rest assured that it is. Really.

ananias73 A truly mesmerizing attempt, back in 1973, to catch the fully emotionally world of a five year old child after watching Frankenstein she believes that this monster exists in a large abandoned house near their village and she finds It as a wounded fugitive soldier (from local civil war) arrives at this house. Beside this simply, wonderful story of how frightening is to be a child is the metaphor of a very specific political period in Spain where the village itself is an allegorical of an isolated country, the poisonous mushrooms the Franco dictatorship, Ana a whole nation in a dreamy nightmare. That was Erice's masterpiece (with the collaboration of Luis Cuadrado magical cinematography) with an exceptional performance from Ana Torrent. A very slow, graceful and unforgettable experience