Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City

The Silence of the White City (2019) | Official Trailer #I | Belén Rueda | Javier Rey | Aura Garrido
Meticulous serial killer terrorizes Vitoria, Spain. Pretty standard murder mystery with a couple of novel bits: horrific way of killing people with bees, and the killer is closer than anyone expects. There is also lots of running. The lead detective and his boss both run for exercise, which is good, because everytime, everytime, they try to collar someone they take off and we have to chase them down. There was one chase scene across the roof of the cathedral that was pretty cool.

Google Maps 3D Image of Cathedral of Santa María de Vitoria

Digging into the past, our detectives discover an old tragedy where an entire family was killed in a house fire. Through movie magic we discover that the family was killed by poison from the leaves of a Yew tree, the fire was set to conceal the crime. Yew trees are kind of weird. They are almost entirely poisonous, they live dang near forever, they are popular with churches, and they make good bows for archery.

Fresco on wall of old monastery (~45:00 mark)

Chasing down obscure leads, our hero visits an old monastery, just after the 45 minute mark. Could not locate the actual building, if there was one. I supposed it could all be faked, but being as Europe is riddled with old buildings, I imagine it could easily be a real one.

Statue that inspired the killer 

Inside the monastery

Julianne Nicholson as 
Detective Megan Wheeler

Aura Garrido as 
Detective Estíbaliz Ruiz de Gauna

The woman detective reminds me of Detective Megan Wheeler from Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Probably just the hair.

Did not really care for the movie. It didn't really grab me, not sure why. Okay, there were two scenes where the bad guy sneaks up behind a person and jabs them with a hypodermic needle, except! you can hear his footsteps and the intended victim just stands there and waits to be jabbed. Could these two incidents have spoiled the entire movie? I dunno, but it didn't help.

On Netflix, in Spanish with subtitles.

Update August 2020 replaced missing video trailer with a slightly different one.