Valley of the Dead

Valley of the Dead is a 2020 Spanish zombie action film directed by Javier Ruiz Caldera and Alberto de Toro set in the Spanish Civil War. Its cast features Miki Esparbé, Aura Garrido, Luis Callejo, Álvaro Cervantes, Jesús Carroza and María Botto. Plot The film is set in 1938, during the latter phases of the Spanish Civil War. A column of SS troops arrive at a small village during a wedding. The SS officer in command takes a toast of the strong alcohol the wedding guests are drinking, but coughs and sputters, causing the guests to laugh at him. Angrily, he orders one of his men to open fire with a machine gun, slaughtering the wedding guests. The SS men then put on gas masks and open numerous canisters containing a strange gas, which float towards the corpses of the villagers. Captain Jan Lozano's high ranking uncle arrives just in time to save him from a firing squad. Jan has repeatedly run afoul of the Nationalist government, and it is only through the intervention of his uncle that he has been spared. General Lozano informs his nephew that in return for sparing him, the regime wants Jan to deliver a message to a unit in a dangerous area of the front. Private Decruz, a deserter that Jan had saved, is assigned to be his driver for the mission, which is seen as extremely dangerous. Wounded nationalist soldiers are seen being loaded onto a train manned by the same SS troops from the beginning of the film. Jan and Delacruz choose to take a shortcut through a valley contested between the two sides, only to stumble upon a roadblock manned by additional Germans. A German officer attempts to prevent them from passing through the area, but Jan subtlety threatens him into letting them through. As they pass through the valley, Jan and Decruz watch as an Italian Fiat fighter is shot down by a Soviet Polikarpov fighter; spotting a parachute from the downed Italian aircraft, Jan decides to take a detour to rescue the pilot, to Decruz' dismay. While searching, they stumble across barrels labeled with the insignia of the SS unit from the film's opening. They soon after reach a clearing, discovering the mangled corpse of the Italian pilot. Before they can return to their mission, a group of Republican soldiers emerge from the forest and capture Jan and Decruz. The Republicans search Jan, discovering that the message he'd been ordered to deliver is meaningless.