Issa López doing the thing where she takes an actual ongoing humanitarian crisis and filters it through fairy tale logic: the drug war violence in mexico is the backdrop and the film never lets you forget it's real—the graffiti that comes to life, the trail of blood, the wishes that cost something—all of it is doing double duty as both magical realism and documentary grief.
the child actors are extraordinary, genuinely, in a way that's almost uncomfortable to watch because you know the film is asking a lot of them emotionally
the production design is doing remarkable things on a tiny budget, the pacing drags slightly in the second act but the emotional payoff is there.
one of the best horror adjacent films of the last decade and it came out in 2017 with basically no budget and nobody talked about it enough
Issa López doing the thing where she takes an actual ongoing humanitarian crisis and filters it through fairy tale logic: the drug war violence in mexico is the backdrop and the film never lets you forget it's real—the graffiti that comes to life, the trail of blood, the wishes that cost something—all of it is doing double duty as both magical realism and documentary grief.
the child actors are extraordinary, genuinely, in a way that's almost uncomfortable to watch because you know the film is asking a lot of them emotionally
the production design is doing remarkable things on a tiny budget, the pacing drags slightly in the second act but the emotional payoff is there.
one of the best horror adjacent films of the last decade and it came out in 2017 with basically no budget and nobody talked about it enough
