The Coffee Table-Movie Review -Unsettling, Nightmare Causing Horror--Not For Your Average Horror Fan-On DVD & VOD May 14, 2024

Original title: La mesita del comedor

Directed by Caye Casas

Written by: Cristina Borobia, Caye Casas

Starring: David Pareja, Estefanía de los Santos, Josep Riera, Claudia Riera, Eduardo Antuña

Spain I 2022 I Horror, Comedy I 90 minutes

This review has taken a considerable amount of time for me to finish. 

#1 I don't want to write any spoilers.       #2 It's been hard to get my mind back into the film.

I have been watching horror movies since I can remember, some of my earliest scares--like many kids of any generation would have to be the Wicked Witch & her flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. Others would be ghost stories I read or my older brothers telling me. Speaking of which, our father took us to see Jaws, I was 9 then.   

Not having access like we do now, where one can go online and check to make sure it's suitable for younger kids, we got in the car and headed to the theater. I had nightmares for days, possibly longer, because of one particular scene. When Richard Dreyfus has gone in the water and is looking at the wrecked ship at the bottom of the ocean a head pops out of an opening where the shark attacked the boat and one of its teeth broke off and remained in the opening. This would lead me to more movies and books as I grew up, wanting to explore that darker side of the brain. 

Maniac(1980) and The Human Centipede & France's Martyrs, not the North American remake, are very disturbing films, none of which I desire to visit again. 

That same feeling is shared with The Coffee Table, one of the most disturbing and unsettling movies I have ever seen, which took me two nights to finish. It's not because of the length, which is only 90 mins, it's because of what happens in the film.

The film starts out innocently enough, a young couple is having a look at furniture and we join them as they are discussing 'The Coffee Table', an argument starts over what the look of the table is, Jesús(David Pareja) thinks it's a great looking table, while his wife, Maria(Estefanía de los Santos), thinks the exact opposite and thinks it's very ugly and doesn't want it in the house. The lighting is very interesting in this scene as initially the light is mostly focused on the salesman but as the couple's argument goes on it focuses more on them but yet a singular light is on the sales floor around the three.

Maria(Estefanía de los Santos-above) tells the salesman that he is a poor salesman for trying to sell them such an ugly table and asks if he would keep it in his home.

Next, we see Jesús pushing, lifting, and tugging the unassembled table in a box, up many flights of stairs. He gets the bottom portion of the table assembled and goes to put the glass on top and realizes that there is a screw missing, yes he forgot to check before he started, lol.

Maria is overjoyed and in hysterics with laughter seeing this wonderful table that her husband demanded they get from the overly pushy salesman, has already begun to not be in his favor and even ridicules him. She has quite a sinister laugh.

She leaves Jesús with the table and their new son to his newfound love, The Coffee Table, before she exits she has another laugh at him. What happens next I will not ruin it for those of you who want to see it, but it is the point of the movie where I put it on pause until the following day.

Maria is going to the store to get a few groceries and a bottle of wine because Jesús's brother is coming with his new girlfriend who is quite younger than him. 

If that wasn't enough a young girl of 13 years, Ruth, has a crush on Jesús & even asks him when he is going to tell his wife about them. Harmless and cute at first, but she becomes adamant that they have an affair going on, which is another added stressful situation for the character of Jesús & kind of an alarming addition to an already unsettling movie.

Gala Flores-above as Ruth

All of this and what happened earlier in the film has an effect on the viewer, even someone like myself who has seen a lot of movies in my lifetime. The road that I went down with this movie came with a warning from the previous reviews and blurbs on the movie poster, but down that road I went even with all the warning signs. I was asked if I would like to review it, it definitely disturbed me and I am sure that is what the film intended to do.

This film gave me a very disturbing nightmare.

Viewers be warned!

I will say that David Pareja who plays Jesús, has one of the best poker faces in cinema, considering all that has and is happening around him.