Is Veronica Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

A panicked phone call with a three-day head start

The movie opens with emergency services answering a call from a panicked girl on June 15, 1991. She screams that something is coming for her brother, and the line cuts off. The story then goes back three days. Verónica is fifteen and lives in the working-class Vallecas district of Madrid. Her father has died, and her mother works a lot of hours to keep the family going, so Verónica looks after her younger siblings: the twins Lucia and Irene, and Antoñito.

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The eclipse is the wrong time for a Ouija board

During the 1991 solar eclipse, Verónica's teacher tells the class that ancient cultures sometimes used eclipses to stage human sacrifices and call up dark spirits. Later, Verónica goes down to the school basement with her friends Rosa and Diana for a Ouija séance. Verónica hopes to reach her late father, and Diana's boyfriend died in a motorcycle crash. The glass cup gets too hot, and Rosa and Diana let go. When the eclipse hits, the cup shatters and cuts Verónica's finger, and a drop of her blood lands on the board. Verónica goes unresponsive, whispers something over and over, and screams in a demonic voice. She comes to in the nurse's office, where the nurse puts it down to iron deficiency.

A blind nun and some Viking symbols

Verónica starts having paranormal experiences, and her friends avoid her. Back in the basement she finds the school's elderly blind nun, whom the students call Sister Death. The nun says the séance tied a dark spirit to Verónica, fails to force it out, and tells her to protect her siblings. Verónica sketches Viking symbols to protect the kids, and the demon wrecks them. She stops the spirit from choking Lucia, only to realize she was the one doing the choking. Burn marks show up under the mattresses, one in the shape of a body for each child. Sister Death says she used to see dark spirits and tried to stop the visions by blinding herself, which did not work. An occult magazine says a séance has to end with a goodbye to the spirit. Rosa tells Verónica that during the séance she kept whispering that she would die within three days.

A jingle for an advertisement, sung at a demon

Desperate, Verónica holds a second séance with her siblings. This is the stretch people dread, and it comes near the end. Antoñito draws the protective symbols, but he copies the symbols of invocation by mistake. They need a melody to sing, so they use the jingle for the Centella advertisement, the one song everyone knows. Verónica asks the spirit to say goodbye, and it refuses. She calls the police and runs out with her siblings, then sees that she isn't holding Antoñito, who is hiding in a closet. She sees the demon in the mirror. What you'll see next: an unseen force attacking her, partial levitation, and then she passes out while the police and a shaken detective watch.