This was a great instance of gamespotting for a couple of reasons, but unfortunately, I can't really get into them without spoilers. The title of this Spanish horror/thriller from Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego is translated to English as "King of the Hill", and it's no coincidence that the phrase is a gameplay mode in a lot of videogames. The movie has a lot in common with other recent European horror/thrillers, but I can't discuss those either without spoilers.

Suffice to say El Rey de la Montanas has a powerful but subtle message about videogaming. I recommend it. It's available on DVD as part of Dimension's "Extreme" line-up. And if you're really curious, I'll go ahead and spoil it a bit after the jump.

(Huge thanks to Erik for recommending it specifically for the gamespotting.)

Spoilers after the jump.

The first inkling that there's something different going on here is a wonderful discussion about Shadow of the Colossus that never actually names the game. Writer Javier Gullon deserves credit for not explaining the conversation and just letting it play out from the middle. If you don't know the game, you're not going to get the dialogue. It's as simple as that. This little bit of character development is for videogamers, and it does far more credit to the game than all the gratuitous shots of Adam Sandler fussing awkwardly with a game controller in Mike Binder's Reign over Me, where the game is named, discussed, and even shown.

But then there are the shots in the movie clearly taken from first person shooters. The first one, over the twin barrels of a shotgun, is quick enough that you might not even catch it. "Wait, was that...?" you might ask yourself, but the movie just charges ahead. However, by the time the final scene is playing out, you can't mistake what Lopez-Gallago was getting at with the way he shoots the view from behind a gun. He does the equivalent of an idle animation, with the gun raised. There is strafing. There is even a friendly fire "indicator" where the muzzle lowers when it's pointed at a non-valid target. We've all seen these in videogames, and the movie is talking to us. The final location even looks and plays like a multiplayer level in a shooter, perhaps one of the ruined villas in Call of Duty 2 or something made with one of Epic's lush textured engines.

Whether you're on board with where El Rey de la Montana goes from there, and what it ultimately does with that, is another story entirely. But you can't deny this is a great candidate for gamespotting in popular culture.