Dir. Laurette Flores, Edgar Nito, Aaron Soto, Isaac Ezban, Lex Ortega, Jorge Michel Grau, Ulises Guzmán, Gigi Sau Guerrero
Special Screening: Movies with Mummy
The Richter Scale says: Horror is one of those movie genres that create an experience beyond the movie you’re watching, because people like to go to the movies for a good scare (or to mock the filmmaker’s attempts to generate a good scare) and it’s probably the genre that creates the most enjoyable social experience (who doesn’t like to see a scary movie with a group of friends?). Of course, as it tends to happen, many of the films people see in this genre are from the US, but on this occasion, eight young filmmakers that specialize in bringing the horror genre to Mexico have joined forces to put together this anthology of short films, each telling a story based on a myth or legend that has been scaring the people of Mexico for a long time.
As it happens with any anthology film, particularly one where every section was made by a different filmmaker, quality varies and even though they were made to be presented together, the filmmakers’ existence of stamping their own name at the end of every short makes it difficult to think of this Project as a unified whole. Of course horror, like humor, is subjective (everybody’s scared of something different) and I can tell you personally that the sections that worked best were the ones that explained less, the ones that didn’t insist on the audience understanding every single thing that happened (there were a few shorts that barely had dialogue, generally the best). The most successful section was Jorge Michel Grau’s Dolls, which was the short that was the most visually attractive and the most effective “punchline” (so to speak).
Something should be clear, this project functions as a platform for these filmmakers to explore their perverted obsessions with the human body (which often leaves little to the imagination). Every short features a scene where the human body is either mutilated or devoured, often even through sex (in one short, a goblin kidnaps a teenage girl to have sex with her). None of these filmmakers is interested in subtlety, which when taken to the extreme sometimes generates reactions in the audience that the filmmaker wasn’t going for, but that’s what makes the experience of watching it with an audience worthwhile.
Mexico Barbaro will screen again at the Municipal Cemetery in Guanajuato City on Friday, July 24 at 11:00 pm, followed by Isaac Ezban’s The Incident (he’s one of the filmmakers in the Mexico Barbaro project)…
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