La comunidad invokes or cites genre cinema without ever simply inhabiting any single genre. It is probably most accurate to say that it is a black comedy with elements of horror and thriller. This film presents principal generic traits of horror without recourse to the supernatural. Horror in this foreclosed and yet modern Madrid resides in nothing otherworldly, but in the quotidian itself. By virtue of its casting, La comunidad seems destined to be thought of as the most ‘Spanish’ film of a director heavily influenced by the commercial genres of Hollywood. The publicity material for the film – in effect the logo of La comunidad – implies as much, showing all fourteen members of the comunidad arrayed in an impassable line. Collectively, they embody a continuum of Spanish cinema/theatre/television history, as sources of autochthonous themes, types and genres.