In short: Romina (2018)

Warning: I can’t avoid heavy spoilers for this one, though I doubt anyone will care!

You know the drill: a carful of young ones with more or less unpleasant personal habits drive to the country for a camping weekend. Their camping space is  not at all ominously called Crystal Lake, probably dubbed thusly in case you were confused which sub-genre you were in. Romina (Francisca Lozano), the best friend of one of the gang and not at all the friend of the rest isn’t taking part in the trip, though. Or at least that’s what everyone thinks, for in fact, Romina is camping just a skip away from the rest of these fools.

A couple of the guys notice her eventually, and decide that a rape is in order. The very next morning, Romina starts to murder everyone involved in the camping trip.

Diego Cohen’s Romina left me a bit confused, somewhat annoyed, and very much dissatisfied. At first, I had the impression of Cohen trying to go somewhere slightly different with his rape revenge slasher combo. Early scenes like the one where all characters talk over each other on the ride to the camping lot suggested an attempt at – rather nerve-wrecking – naturalism to the proceedings of the slasher genre. A bit further in, I assumed the decision to not show the rape and show only the aftermath of the following murders was meant to signal some kind of comment on the way an audience relates to violence in slashers, but a couple of scenes later, some of the violence got pretty explicit.

It’s certainly not filmed like a standard slasher, lacking the rhythm of stalking and slashing. Unfortunately, Cohen doesn’t actually find anything to replace it with, sucking all the tension of the genre out of the film without ever convincing me there’s a reason to do so. I’m rather confused about the rape revenge motivation of the plot, too, or rather, why the film goes that way but doesn’t bother to provide Romina with even a hint of characterisation, leaving this killer in a slasher movie who has an actual humanly relatable reason for her murders with less human character traits than Jason Voorhees.

Then there’s the plot twist that suggests somebody involved really rather liked All the Boys Love Mandy Lane (I don’t blame him), but wanted to leave out all the pesky motivations and put a male character in the dominating role of the murderous couple. Not surprisingly, this doesn’t improve my opinion of the film, nor does if work in any way, shape or form.


The whole of Romina feels like it was based on the first draft of a script, lacking any actual focus and consistency. It’s a bit of a shame, too, for the film certainly looks well enough and has a damn good synth score. It just seems all rather pointless.