Crazy Old Lady (Vieja Loca)

Laura (Agustina Liendo) is driving while talking to her mother Alicia (Carmen Maura), with her daughter Elena (Emma Cetrángolo) asleep on the back seat. It doesn’t take too long to work out that Alicia is suffering from dementia. She calls twice and Laura has to repeat a recipe twice. Alcia’s carer, according to her, has left her alone.

This is all very distressing for Laura who worried that her mother is on her own, and not taking her meds, could be in trouble. In desperation Laura calls on her ex Pedro (Daniel Hendler) to check in on her, as she is still a long way off.

Pedro agrees but the first thing that happens is he runs over Alicia’s dog. Greeting Pedro it’s clear that Alicia is agitated and the house is a mess. She also has some difficulty identifying Pedro whom she confuses from someone from her past, Cesar.

Trying to get Alicia to take her pill fails and Pedro ends up trussed and tied to a chair. Alicia then begins to torture Pedro with a hot poker which soon escalates to worse, a game of true or false, the bizarre and a reading of the Antigone.

Written and directed by Martín Mauregui there are several disturbing elements to Crazy Old Lady. As a black comedy which the title suggests and which Mauregui is clearly trying to develop, it doesn’t work. Having so clearly set out that Alicia has dementia that actually upsets Laura, to then try and engineer a comedy is perverse. It could have worked if it was funny but here it just comes over as cruel and exploitative.

There is some background that tries to account for Alicia’s treatment of Pedro however this fails to because of the aforementioned reason.

What can’t be disputed is that the cast are excellent. Hendler and Maura basically carry the film as it’s virtually a two hander. Maura seamlessly switching from dementia to a more lucid state, while Hendler begins to work out, as far he can, how Alicia’s mind is working.

Maura’s character and performance brings to mind the hagsploitation horror sub-genre. These films from the 1960’s and 70’s featured older female actors who still had their acting chops but had fallen out of favour with the Hollywood establishment of the time, for various reasons. The most famous being Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, with Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.

It’s a controversial area of discussion but what became clear was that many of the actors who took these roles proved that their acting skills had not diminished.

Maura doesn’t fit into the above being a different generation and never been that closely associated with the Hollywood system. And has had continuous and diverse employment throughout her long career.

Crazy Old Lady will be on Shudder from 27 February 2026.