Crazy Old Lady Director Talks About Building Anxiety and Tension at Every Moment In New Horror Film | Fantastic Fest

Crazy Old Lady, a Spanish film originally titled Vieja Loca, just premiered at Fantastic Fest 2025, and it's a wild, anxiety-filled ride that lives up to its name. Directed by Martin Mauregui, the story follows Daniel Hendler's Pedro, who gets a call from his ex-girlfriend for a once in a life time favor: to take care of her senile mother, Carmen Maura's Alicia, the titular crazy old lady.

Martin Mauregui sat down with The Direct's Russ Milheim where he discussed the process of keeping anxiety and tension at an all-time high throughout the entire movie, and working with the incredible Carmen Maura.

Check out the quotes below, as well as the entire video interview. Crazy Old Lady does not currently have a release date in the United States, but is expected to be available on Shudder in the future.

Audiences who want to experience more anxiety and tension-filled horror experiences, the recent adaptation of Stephen King's The Long Walk is the perfect place to look.

Crazy Old Lazy Director Martin Mauregui on Keeping Tension and Anxiety Alive

Mauregui Manages to Keep It All Tense Even If It's Just a Conversation

Editor's Note: The following responses from Martin Mauregui are courtesy of his translator.

• The Direct: "I want to talk about that opening scene, which I think was a very unique way to set the stage for this movie, because it's a 10-minute scene in the car, and it's mostly a phone conversation. So can you talk about why you felt that was the best way to set the foundation of everything that was to come see?"

Martin Mauregui: A little fun fact: that happened to a friend of mine. She was driving and she received a call, she picked up, and it was her mom, and [she was] telling these stories about a husband that never existed. So I wanted to introduce this as a daily life scene. But then it kept getting longer and longer to the point that something sinister is coming, something bad is coming. I also wanted to introduce this tone as something from daily life becoming something sinister, or like, it comes to break the equilibrium in everything.

• The Direct: "It is an anxiety-filled movie. Can you talk about how you made that anxiety so strong throughout the entire thing, and then also just building tension throughout the movie?"

Martin Mauregui: So there are multiple ways to keep building down tension and to get to that point of anxiety. First of all, is working with the cast, and then in the multiple rehearsals, we are building down tension as well.

And it's important to keep the tension between the characters, either keep that equilibrium or break it between that tension, and that is what sets the rhythm and the tone, and we keep improving that tone from different perspectives when we were recording...

And also it was because we had that tension in the set, because we really had [them] tied up with chains and everything on the chair, so the tension was really there.

• The Direct: "I think it's also so impressive how you were able to keep the tension and anxiety through, like, just a lot of this movie is conversation. So what do you think is the key there in making sure, you know, when nothing is physically happening, like, even during those conversations, you never lose an ounce of that tension?"

Martin Mauregui: We have a lot of tools to keep that conversation interesting and well, first of course, we were like improving the scenes and then deciding which ones are we're gonna go in the movie or not. So that was kind of the first job. But at the same time, we have a lot of tools to work with the characters.

For example, this idea of the repetition at some point when she starts repeating the same game, that's one of the tools that we create to make that conversation, like building up the tension. And [it's the] same at the beginning in the first scene, when she keeps asking for the same recipe.

So we use that as a tool. It could be taken as a contradiction, because from we saying the same thing over and over at the same time, we are creating novelty in something new and different.

The entire video interview from Fantastic Fest 2025 can be watched here:

For more Fantastic Fest 2025 interviews, here's our conversation with the director of Sisu: Road to Revenge.