While not without its merits, it ultimately just feels like a disappointment.

Despite starting off in a bustling club, there is a distinct emptiness that lingers throughout the film. This emptiness is one that was likely made as an artistic choice to demonstrate Lucía’s loneliness, but it also is a bit of an indicator of how hollow the film actually is. While the relationship she develops with Alba is meant to be a focal point of the film, it is not developed properly enough for you to get attached to them as a pair. That’s why the third-act reveal seems so forced, as rather than making you afraid for what could happen, it just feels like an inevitable progression that obviously will get interrupted.

As previously stated, however, the main problem with “Venus” is that it is essentially “REC” with a cosmic horror twist. Sure, this might seem like a surface-level complaint given how they both take place in doomed apartment buildings, but the similarities are deeper than that. You’ve got a grotesque entity locked in the complex’s attic, a sinister conspiracy involving the potential end of the world, and a whole lot of blood. It also doesn’t serve as an effective adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dreams in the Witch House,” only adapting the vaguest possible elements from the short story.