I remember the day I got a voice message from the IRS saying that I owed them $10,000 and that agents would be at my home at the end of the day. Already working with the IRS on a different matter, I knew it was a fraudulent call. But fear is a fantastic tool for the scammer. Ahcitz Azcona’s thriller, The Inevitable Death of a Crab, presents a similar situation that might be real.
Businessman Carlos Barba (Juan Manuel Azcona) and his son Santiago (Ahcitz Azcona) are at home after sending the rest of the family off on a cruise. For Carlos, this quiet morning is interrupted by a mysterious phone call warning him that influential people are after him and that he needs to pay for protection. Believing this is a scam, Carlos hangs up…but is it a scam? The phone rings again, and the caller is much more aggressive, claiming that his family is under surveillance and will be picked off, starting with Santiago. When Santiago arrives, Carlos tells him about the scam and not to answer the phone, which the curious Carlos does.
From a seed of an idea, filmmaker Ahcitz Azcona allows this thriller to germinate and grow slowly. The first half of the film questions whether the phone calls are legitimate. If you’ve ever watched those scammer revenge videos online, you see some of the tricks employed. The first is when Carlos answers the phone, the caller asks him, “who is this?” Now, the scammer has your name to look up online. Subsequent phone calls then tries to extract…
