Offering to the Storm (Ofrenda a la tormenta) is the final film in the Baztan Trilogy. The Spanish language thriller stars Marta Etura as Police Inspector Amaia Salazar, who finally learns the deep and evil secrets of her town’s past.
Offering to the Storm (Ofrenda a la tormenta) follows The Invisible Guardian (El guardián invisible) and The Legacy of the Bones (Legado en los huesos). The trilogy is based on novels by Dolores Redondo.
When the story picks up, Amaia’s baby is 5 months old. Most of the care of the child falls to her husband James (Benn Northover) and her Tía Engrasi (Itziar Aizpuru).
Amaia is busy chasing down the case of missing infants. The infants were apparently used as sacrifices to an evil power that has been worshiped in the area for many years. As in the first two stories, Amaia’s personal history is intimately entwined with the case.
She had a twin sister who suffered a “crib death” as an infant. Amaia suspects her sister was one of the infants given up willingly by their parents for material gain. She’s also searching for her mother. Amaia swears her mother is alive, even though everyone is convinced she died in the flood at the end of the second film. They even have a funeral for her, although they haven’t found her body.
Amaia goes to Padre Sarasola (Imanol Arias), who tells her more about the evil the church fights in the area.
She also gets quite involved – too involved – with Judge Markina (Leonardo Sbaraglia). She originally goes to him because she wants to open the coffins of the babies who died of crib death. She’s sure the coffins will be empty. He refuses to give the order.
After she suffers the terrible loss of one of the officers on her team, she turns to Judge Markina for comfort. Her husband and child are away in Paris. Although this was a messy situation and not smart on Amaia’s part, it did eventually lead to the resolution of the case.
By the end of Offering to the Storm all the threads of the story were tied up. The threads holding Amaia’s mother and sisters to the story were unraveled. The evil was exposed. Quite a few people died getting to the truth. Evil doesn’t go away without a fight.
Through all of the Baztan Trilogy I’ve really liked the character Amaia Salazar. She’s a great cop, a great leader, a loving family member. She’s flawed and broken in many ways. She doesn’t give up. Marta Etura did a terrific job with the role and handled both the strength and the vulnerability of the character with ease.
The cinematography is moody, dark. It’s often color free, but might suddenly be saturated with yellow or orange. Then just as suddenly go back to black and white. The area is wet and snowy, but there’s no flood. There are important shots from the famous bridge that is almost a character in the story by the end of the trilogy.
I couldn’t find a trailer with subtitles. Netflix, of course, will have them.
All three of the films in the trilogy are streaming on Netflix. If you haven’t watched any of them, go through them in order. The plot and characters will make more sense.