Why Arianne From The Devil Below Looks So Familiar

Horror movie "The Devil Below" is heating up on Netflix, presently sitting at No. 10 on the streaming service's daily Top 10 chart. The movie has gotten very bad reviews from critics, with a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but it's a new horror movie on Netflix, so people are going to watch it whether it's good or not.

The movie, which was filmed on location in Kentucky, tells the story of a group of researchers and their hired guide who go on an expedition to find the lost, ruined Appalachian town of Shookum Hills, which hasn't been put on a map since the 1970s after a fire ignited in the town's coal mine and sinkholes opened up. The entire town of over 1000 people vanished, seemingly fallen into the earth. The fire is still burning, the town is unlivable, and the locals don't want to talk about it. The researchers are trying to find out what really happened to the town. Darren (Adan Canto) is looking for a purely scientific explanation, while Shawn (Chinaza Uche) suspects something supernatural and demonic. And it turns out he's right. The mine is full of monsters.

The guide is a woman named Arianne, who's been doing her own research on Shookum Hills and has her own mysterious connection to the place. As the researchers (who are all men) get picked off by the monsters, Arianne has to save herself and anyone else she can.

Arianne is played by Spanish actress Alicia Sanz, who has been in some other streaming projects of note from which you may recognize her.

Alicia Sanz's breakout American role was a guest-starring arc in Season 2 of "From Dusk till Dawn: The Series," director Robert Rodriguez's TV adaptation of his Quentin Tarantino-penned 1996 vampire movie. She played Paloma Gutierrez, a woman who gets mixed up in a plot by culebra Santanico Pandemonium (Eiza Gonzalez) to get revenge on Amancio Malvado (Esai Morales), the culebra kingpin who turned her into a vampire and enslaved her for centuries. Unfortunately, things don't work out for Paloma, and Santanico ends up having to kill her with a stake through the heart after Malvado turns her and she attacks Santanico in a fit of jealous rage.

It was a small supporting role, but Sanz made an impression in it, demonstrating chemistry with Gonzalez and bringing some pathos to the role of a migrant woman who is mistreated by everyone she comes in contact with on her journey in a way that shows the vicious cycle of abuse Santanico is trapped in.

Alicia Sanz was almost 30 when she played high school social media star Alexa Medina. Alexa is everything the movie's nerdy heroine Dani Barnes (Nesta Cooper) is not: Popular, glamorous, and mean. She and Dani used to be best friends, but now they resent each other. Their conflict gets worse when Dani gets a makeover and starts dating Alexa's ex, football player Cameron Drake (Keith Powers). Alexa seems cool and welcoming at first, but it's only to lull Dani into a false sense of security before she publicly assassinates Dani's character. She inadvertently teaches Dani an important lesson about staying true to oneself. 

Sanz said that she doesn't have much in common with Alexa. When she was in school, she hated bullies so much that she would get in physical fights with them. "I used to defend my friends" when they were getting bullied, she told LATV's The Zoo. "I would get in fights. I was really tough."

Sanz has a prominent role in Amazon's Spanish historical drama series "The Legend of El Cid," which tells the story of the titular knight, named Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, one of Spain's national heroes, portrayed on the show by Jaime Lorente. She plays Infanta Urraca, the eldest daughter of Ferdinand, Count of Castile (José Luis García Pérez), who is angry about being passed over in the line of succession simply because she's a woman, which leads to conflict in the court.

Sanz told Spanish magazine La Vanguardia that she admires Urraca. "I like how brave she is. That she's either fearless or overcomes it or it doesn't show," she said. "She fights for what she wants and nothing and no one gets in her way. I think, like her, I have the strength to keep fighting relentlessly. I'm sure she's an Aries too!" 

She's set to return for Season 2 of the series.