The Communion Girl, or La Nina de la Comunion, is a Spanish supernatural horror film that is the latest addition to Shudder. Set in a small town somewhere in the Spanish countryside, the film follows a young woman named Sara as she comes across something mysterious while returning home late one night, which then relentlessly haunts her and her friends. It is easy to state that The Communion Girl is just a very usual supernatural horror film, with the usual visuals and the expected overreliance on jump scares. For those in favor of such aesthetics and plot, this film can be a rather enjoyable watch.
Spoiler Alert
Plot Summary: What Is the Film About?
Like most other things, the plot structure in The Communion Girl is also something we have seen before, as we are first shown a brief glimpse of the horror that is about to unfold and then introduced to the main storyline. The film begins with a young woman sitting on her bed, shocked and crying that she has lost her doll, for which she is very concerned. The woman, named Sonia, has burn-like marks all over her body and seems to be delusional even when her boyfriend walks into the room. The man tries to comfort her, but Sonia is in extreme fear when the lights in her room start to flicker. As she complains of a girl supposedly following her everywhere and taking her to unimaginable places, the figure of a spooky girl does appear behind the boyfriend. Totally consumed by fear, Sonia stabs herself to death using a fork.
Four years after this horrific incident, we are taken to a small town in the Spanish countryside, inside the local church of the place. A number of young girls in the town are having their first communion, and among them is also young Judit. As is soon revealed, Judit is the younger sister of the film’s protagonist, Sara. Having moved to the town with their parents sometime earlier, both Sara and Judit find it hard to adjust to the new place. While Judit struggles some more, Sara has already become very good friends with another woman her age, Rebe. During the communion, Rebe walks into the church and makes some plans with Sara for the night, which involve going out for some drinks and fun. After the ceremony is over and photos of the young girls are being taken, a strange woman approaches Sara and asks her if she or anyone else at the place has seen her little girl, Marisol. As she keeps desperately asking for her daughter, who had apparently come for her communion, the priest and another man take the woman away from the church. Sara does not care much about this incident and instead looks forward to going out with Rebe that night, knowing little that her life is soon going to turn into a nightmare.
What Hauntings Do Sara And Her Friends Have To Face?
On that very night, Sara goes out of her house, promising her parents to return early, and meets with Rebe. Their plan is to meet with another friend, who will drive them to the nearest nightclub in his car. At the club, the two women take half a pill of ecstasy each and go about their usual merrymaking, but this does not last too long as they realize that their friend has left them. Sara and Rebe now have to look for a ride to return to the town, and eventually, they find one driven by two men, Chivo and Pedro.
Earlier at the club, Rebe had been made to feel uncomfortable by Chivo, who happens to be the local drug dealer as well, while on the other side, Sara and Pedro had felt an interest in each other. With no other option, the two women agree to take the ride, but Chivo then takes an off-road diversion. The man does so either to scare the others and have some mischievous fun, or he knows this to be a shortcut. But as the car enters a forested area, Sara sees a young girl run across the road in front of them, and she orders Chivo to stop the car. Thinking that the girl might be lost in the forest, Sara gets out of the car to check, and Pedro also follows. This decision of Sara’s is justified by her affection and bond with her younger sister, and so the woman feels it important to check on this little girl in the forest. Although no girl can be found, Sara does spot and pick up a sinister-looking doll inside the forest and keeps it with herself. The doll is like the ones given at communions, and later back at home, when Judit asks to play with it, Sara refuses. She very clearly states that the doll must belong to the girl she had seen in the forest, and so she intends to find the girl and return the toy.
However, trouble begins after this very incident, as something seems to haunt Sara. One day while taking a bath, she feels something to be inside her bathroom, and going to check, she is jumped at by a girl with a ghostly face, wearing a dress worn during communion. The girl seems to pull Sara into a different dimension, as the woman sees herself drowning inside a well, being pulled down by the ghost. In reality, though, Sara’s body lies still and lifeless in the bathroom, and her parents, alerted by her screams, rush in to check. Seeing their daughter in this state, the parents call out to Sara, trying to wake her up, and this helps massively, as the woman is able to shake off the ghost inside the well and swim up toward the surface. As soon as Sara comes out of the water, she regains consciousness in reality and survives the attack. But the woman also notices that some burn-like scars that had started to grow on her skin have now spread much more widely across her body.
When Sara shares all this with Rebe, the two think that this might have been a long-lasting effect of the drugs they had taken. They even meet with Chivo to discuss this since he was the one who sold them the drugs, but nothing comes of this meeting. Later that night, Rebe is haunted in a similar manner inside the washroom of a local pub that she frequents. The same ghostly girl appears in front of her, and Rebe runs out to call Sara from a nearby phone booth. It is at this very time that the woman is attacked by the ghost, and like with Sara, Rebe’s body falls lifeless while she is dragged into a different dimension. Once again, the ghost tries to pull Rebe down a well, and it is Sara who rushes to the place to call out to her and wake her up, just like Sara’s parents had done with her. This works once more, as Rebe is able to be saved. But later in The Communion Girl, Rebe is once again attacked by the ghost at her own house in front of her father. Although the father is extremely abusive towards Rebe, he rushes in to save her, and in the frenzy of the moment, Rebe accidentally stabs him as well, almost killing him.
While Sara and Rebe had started to get the strange marks on their bodies, Chivo had gotten them too, but the man did not tell anyone about this. As can be guessed, he is attacked next at his gaming arcade late at night when nobody else is around. But unlike the two women, Chivo’s situation is much worse, as he sees the ghost and then tries to drive away from the place. It is clear that once the ghost appears to someone, she also very soon attacks the person and takes them into an alternate reality. Similarly, now too, she takes Chivo away, with his lifeless body at the wheel of the car, and this causes a massive accident. Chivo dies from the attack, and Pedro is left in grief.
What Does Sara Find Out About The Girl?
In order for Sara to understand the scenario, it becomes very important for her to know the entire story about the mysterious girl. She had earlier returned to the church to speak with the priest, Father Manuel. When asked about the doll, the priest ignores the conversation and refuses to reveal anything. Now, when Sara, Rebe, and Pedro come to the church, they find video slides from a 1982 communion playing and wonder why the priest has been watching it. Soon they find an answer to it, as they see one of the girls in the video holding the same doll that they had found in the forest. From the relevant files, they find out that the girl was called Marisol, and this instantly links a connection with the woman who had come to Judit’s communion looking for her daughter, also named Marisol.
At the church, more horrific hauntings follow, as the three characters find Father Manuel lying dead on the floor, very clearly having been killed by the ghost. The demon also attacks the three and takes Pedro into the same alternate dimension, where there is an attempt on his life as well. But the two women reach him in time and save him from trouble. It had also been revealed earlier that two other women, sisters by relation, had been afflicted by similar troubles in the town some five years earlier. The sisters had also developed strange marks on their bodies and always lived in fear that someone was coming to kill them. In fact, the woman seen at the very beginning of The Communion Girl, Sonia, was one of these sisters, and the day after she killed herself with the fork, her sister also hanged herself. Sonia’s boyfriend, whom Sara visits, also confirms that the doll is the same one that his girlfriend had found.
Therefore, all the answers seem to lie with Marisol’s mother, whose identity is revealed to be Remedios, and Sara and Pedro now visit her home. While this is a rather difficult situation since Remedios’ husband does not let anybody into their home, Sara learns that young Marisol disappeared after her communion at the church. The girl had suddenly developed strange marks on her body and also some unexplained fears, because of which the townsfolk would always make fun of her and stay away from her. On the day of her first communion, Marisol had run off into the ruins near the courtyard of the church, and she had never returned from there. Although it was earlier suggested that these ruins are avoided by the people of the town, Sara and Pedro understand that they will have to go to the specific place to understand the mystery.
Will Sarah Die In The End?
When the three characters finally reach the ruins, they immediately identify the place to be the same as the one where the ghost would bring each of them during its attacks. It is Sara who then makes the final revelation when she falls into the well and finds herself face-to-face with the ghost of the girl. But instead of attacking her, the ghost now crawls up to Sara and hugs her. Marisol was ostracized by the entire town because of the marks on her body, and so the little girl craved touch and warmth. The ghost was probably trying to get a human to hold her for all this while, but everyone was getting spooked by her. Now when she finally hugs Sara, the ghost disappears, and in its place, the skeleton of Marisol appears. When Marisol entered the ruins on the day of her communion, the little girl drowned and died, and her body was lost under the well.
Relieved that they have finally solved the matter and also freed Marisol’s spirit, Sara and Rebe return home. However, the sinister-looking doll is still with Sara, and young Judit now takes away the doll and starts playing with it. Sara notices and she immediately scolds her sister, but Rebe notices that Judit now also has strange marks on her hand. Very soon, lights start to flicker, and things in the room get flown around when a horrible-looking monster emerges from the shadows and attacks the three characters. Although The Communion Girl had always made it seem like Marisol had been the only ghost, it was actually the doll that was haunted. A short scene also shows Marisol first getting the doll, which had been found by her pet dog. As Marisol started playing with the doll, she started to get strange marks on her body, and on the day of the communion, it was her doll which made her go into the ruins. It was the doll that had an evil presence in it, and although it is not shown during The Communion Girl‘s ending, the monster most possibly kills Sara, Rebe, and Judit.
