Sundays: Honest Review — Is It Worth Watching? | 7.1/10

Sundays is a beautifully crafted but deliberately unsettling film that asks uncomfortable questions about faith, family obligation, and what we really know about the people closest to us. It’s absolutely worth watching if you’re drawn to character-driven European cinema that refuses easy answers, though it won’t satisfy anyone looking for conventional catharsis.

The plot (no spoilers)

Sundays centers on Ainara, a seventeen-year-old academic overachiever at a Catholic school who drops a bomb on her unsuspecting family: she wants to enter a convent and dedicate her life to God. Her father buys into it almost immediately, but her aunt Maite sees something darker lurking beneath this sudden spiritual awakening—something the rest of the family refuses to acknowledge or investigate.

The film operates in the register of psychological thriller meets family drama, building dread through whispered conversations and what’s left unsaid rather than through plot mechanics. It’s a slow-burn piece set in the suffocating corridors of Catholic Spain, where propriety and faith run so deep that nobody wants to look too closely at the cracks forming beneath the surface.

Acting & direction

Blanca Soroa carries the weight of the film with a performance so controlled it becomes eerie—Ainara’s serenity reads less like genuine conviction and more like calculated performance, which is exactly the point. Patricia López Arnaiz as Maite is the emotional anchor, a woman wrestling with institutional knowledge she can’t quite articulate without sounding paranoid or cruel to the people she loves.

Alauda Ruiz de Azúa’s direction is meticulous and claustrophobic, favoring close-ups and interior spaces that feel increasingly suffocating as the runtime progresses. The cinematography bathes everything in muted, overcast light that makes suburban Spain look less like home and more like a holding cell, and the pacing is deliberately glacial, trusting the audience to feel the mounting unease rather than telling us about it.

The strengths

• The film’s refusal to provide easy psychological explanations or tidy resolutions creates genuine discomfort that lingers long after the credits roll.
• Patricia López Arnaiz delivers a career-best performance that communicates everything through body language and barely suppressed panic without ever becoming melodramatic.
• The exploration of how religious institutions can cloak darker truths is handled with surgical precision rather than heavy-handed moralizing.
• The sound design—or lack thereof—creates an oppressive quiet that makes every conversation feel like it’s happening underwater.

The weaknesses

• The film’s glacial pace will absolutely test the patience of viewers who need plot momentum, and at 112 minutes it occasionally feels like it’s spinning its wheels in the third act.
• The final revelation, while emotionally devastating, doesn’t quite land with the seismic impact the slow-burn setup seems to promise, leaving the ending feeling slightly less explosive than the buildup deserves.
• Some supporting characters feel sketched rather than fully realized, particularly Ainara’s father, who could have been developed into something more psychologically complex.

Who should watch it

If you love slow-burn psychological dramas in the vein of recent Spanish and European cinema—think the quieter intensity of films that premiered at San Sebastián or Berlin—then Sundays is essential viewing. This is for viewers comfortable with ambiguity, institutional critique delivered through subtext, and performances that reward close attention rather than explosive acting choices.

Final verdict

Sundays is a smartly constructed examination of how families rationalize the irrational and how institutions protect their own at the expense of vulnerable people, anchored by performances that communicate volumes through silence. It’s not a crowd-pleaser, and it doesn’t want to be—but if you’re looking for a film that trusts you to piece together its horrors without spelling them out, this is an intelligent and deeply uncomfortable experience that validates its modest 7.1 rating.