Horror Movie Review: On the 3rd Day (2021)

Written by Alberto Fasce and Gonzalo Ventura, directed by Daniel de la Vega, and starring Mariana Anghileri and Gerardo Romano, On the 3rd Day begins with so much promise, even if the dreadful dubbing threatens to ruin it.

Try and get past that though, and drink in the tension of Cecilia (Mariana Anghileri) and her young son Martin (Octavio Belmonte) getting in a car accident late one night. The car they crash into is being driven by a priest named Padre Enrique (Gerardo Romano), who earlier we saw being told to transport something in a large crate on the suggestion of it being the last time he will have to do this.

So, they crash into each other, and when Cecilia wakes up, she finds herself alone in a disused building. Confused, hurt, with no memory of the events following the crash, she starts a desperate search to find her son, who is missing.

Playing out in very non-linear fashion, the film jumps between Cecilia’s search, her time at a hospital, a lengthy hypnosis session that starts to clear up some of the mystery, and the events surrounding Padre Enrique after the crash. There was something wicked in crate, something nightmarish, and it got free. Now it’s his job to stop it and anyone it interacted with.

Playing it very coy for most of its runtime, even though it’s fairly obvious what the ‘villain’ of the piece is, On the 3rd Day is a film that steadily gets worse, the longer it goes on. The heavy tension and Giallo-style atmosphere begins to dissipate as the film slows down to a crawl, and the intrigue is replaced with boredom. All this with truly horrendous dubbing done by voice actors who are just bad.

So, what’s the big mystery? It’s a vampire of course, a very old and dangerous vampire, and it does look great. Unfortunately, by time this point is reached, all the good will built up has been lost and most will just want it to end. Even though the ending itself is fairly satisfying, and an added piece of vampire lore adds some charm.

So much promise, and even though it’s still not a terrible film overall, it does end up being unremarkable and difficult to recommend as a watch. Least of all because of the dubbing. Whoever decided that it was a good idea to dub the actors instead of keeping their original language and use subtitles, did more to harm the film’s overall quality than anyone else.