General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Chalk Line

The Chalk Line (Spanish: Jaula, "cage") is a 2022 Spanish psychological thriller directed by Ignacio Tatay, in which a couple takes in a mute, traumatized girl found wandering a road at night and the wife, Paula, must decipher the girl's strange behavior, including her refusal to step outside a chalk square drawn on the floor, to uncover her identity and dark past.¹ It was Tatay's feature debut, written with Isabel Peña and produced by Pokeepsie Films, the company of Álex de la Iglesia and Carolina Bang.²

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Jaula; working title La casa de la tiza ("The Chalk House")²^•³
Director / writers	Ignacio Tatay (feature debut); screenplay by Tatay and Isabel Peña²
Production	Pokeepsie Films; producers Carolina Bang and Álex de la Iglesia; distributor Sony Pictures Entertainment Iberia²
Release	Spanish theaters 9 September 2022; Netflix streaming from 24 October 2022²^•¹
Runtime / language	106 minutes; European Spanish¹
Main cast	Elena Anaya (Paula), Pablo Molinero (Simón), Eva Tennear (Clara), Carlos Santos (Eduardo), Eva Llorach (Maite)⁴
Reception	75% on the Tomatometer (8 reviews); 57% Popcornmeter; IMDb 6.1/10 from about 13,000 votes¹^•⁴

Spoilers

Plot premise

Paula (Elena Anaya) and her husband Simón (Pablo Molinero) are driving home from dinner when they come upon a young girl (Eva Tennear) wandering alone on the road. She does not speak, and after two weeks in the hospital with no one claiming her, the couple takes her into their home temporarily.² The girl, named Clara, is fixated on the idea that a monster will punish her should she step out of a chalk square drawn on the floor, and she repeatedly draws, wipes away, and redraws the chalk lines that bound her world.²^•⁵

The film's first act plays like a family drama shading into unease, teasing the possibility of something supernatural in the silent blonde child, whose first vocalizations seem like random noises unless one speaks German.⁶^•⁵ The word Clara eventually utters, "buma", turns out to be the German "buhman", meaning boogeyman, and Paula deciphers it by trying different spellings.⁷ The mystery resolves into human crime rather than the supernatural: the neighbor Eduardo (Carlos Santos) had kept Clara and her mother Ingrid captive in his basement for years, and Clara's chalk boundaries are a conditioned defense mechanism against punishment.⁷^•⁸

Production

Origins. Tatay has said the project grew out of true-crime news stories that struck him as recurring across the world, and that the script went through several shapes, at one point a slasher, before settling as a psychological thriller. He began developing the idea around 2014, rewrote it with co-writer Isabel Peña in 2015 and 2016, and the two finished the script in 2019.³ The title was contested inside the production: de la Iglesia favored La casa de tiza, but Tatay insisted on Jaula because, in his words, all of the characters are locked in their own cage, a physical or psychological confinement that the film's visual metaphors repeatedly invoke.³^•⁹

Shoot. The film was shot in Madrid.¹⁰ Production was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the crew to stop filming and resume in the summer under tightly controlled conditions.¹¹ The crew included Goya-winning technicians, with music by Snorri Hallgrímsson and cinematography by Oriol Barcelona.³^•¹²

Release. Jaula opened in Spanish theaters on 9 September 2022 under Sony Pictures Entertainment Iberia, presented as part of Pokeepsie's "Fear Collection" label.²^•¹³ The theatrical version opens with "Álex de la Iglesia presenta"; when the film reached Netflix about a month and a half later, on 24 October 2022, that credit was replaced with "Netflix presenta".¹⁰^•¹ It spent several weeks in the top 10 most-watched titles on Netflix in Colombia and platform-wide there.¹⁴

Reception

Critics were divided but generally positive. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 75% Tomatometer from 8 reviews (6 fresh, 2 rotten), with an average of rated reviews of 6.50/10, while audiences gave it 57% on the Popcornmeter.¹ IMDb users rate it 6.1/10 from about 13,000 votes, and Filmaffinity users 5.8 from more than 5,600 votes.⁴^•¹²

Praise centered on atmosphere and performance. Reviewers called it a slow-burn, genuinely disturbing psychological horror restrained with gore, whose fear comes from not knowing whether the threat is supernatural or painfully human.⁶ Common Sense Media's reviewer found it "strongly acted, pieced together well, and thrilling to the end", and the Spanish press praised Tatay's handling of space and Elena Anaya's lead performance.¹⁵^•¹¹ Critics also singled out the young Eva Tennear, whose silent performance holds the camera and anchors the bond with Paula.¹⁶

Criticism targeted the script. M.N. Miller of Ready Steady Cut wrote that the film "had promise but ultimately succumbs to an uneven script and an ending that plays it too safe", and Roger Moore found that after a strong first act built on the chalk-line hook, the film "abruptly turns in an entirely more conventional and less satisfying direction".¹⁷^•⁵ Several reviewers noted unexplained plot points, and the film's content advisories flag graphic imagery of abused and murdered children alongside themes of child abduction and sexual violence.¹⁷^•¹⁵

Context in Spanish cinema

The film sits in the recent wave of Spanish thrillers and crime stories that Netflix has distributed internationally; commentators described it as evidence that the streaming platform still sees potential in Spanish crime cinema, and Tatay himself developed it through ESCAC's ópera prima program for first-time directors before de la Iglesia's Pokeepsie Films financed it.¹⁸^•¹⁴ Anaya, a Goya-winning actress with a habit of working with first-time directors, said she took the role because the script gave her a female character with many layers.¹⁹

A different, unrelated feature film titled Chalk Line (without "The") entered post-production in 2026: a Philadelphia-shot drama directed by Bridget Smith for Philly Born Films, about an assistant district attorney prosecuting a decorated veteran for murder.²⁰

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Psychological horror films › Psychological horror films, 2010s and later

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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