****
Directed by Adrián García Bogliano.
Starring Gigi Saul Guerrero, Eugenio Rubio, Yago Andreu Sandoval.
Horror, Mexico, 104 Minutes.
Reviewed as part of Tubi FrightFest Halloween 2026.
Usually known for her work behind the camera, Gigi Saul Guerrero makes her lead debut in Adrián García Bogliano’s hard hitting ghost story. After watching her young son die in a fiery accident where she was unable to save him, Guerrero’s character Patricia is lost in a fog of grief, not helped by the constant stupor of heavy medication. Losing track of time, Patricia soon finds herself conversing with the spirit of her son. At first it seems her close husband Andrés, and her two sisters, are not fully understanding but when they start having their own troubling experiences , they soon begin to fear for their own safety while Patricia struggles to regain her grip on reality while getting troublingly close to the manipulative spirit.
Over the years, Spanish director Bogliano has quietly built up an impressive body of work, including the likes of BLACK CIRCLE, and this is yet another strong piece of work that deserves to raise his profile here and elsewhere. The atmosphere, even before the fiery incident that kicks off the plot, is oppressive throughout and he manages to keep the audience on their toes with a plot that mixes up time and scrambles its characters perceptions to great effect without ever being overly confusing. For the most part Bogliano avoids the cliches of the usual family under supernatural siege playbook, delivering instead a sometimes relentless tale that trades in something more unsettling.
Guerrero also acquits herself well here, proving her acting skills beyond doubt here. She manages to gain sympathy from the audience with a naturalistic style that never slides into histrionics, while also managing to get under the skin. A shower scene manages to avoid exploitation altogether and turns itself into something far more unsettling. A visual motif of shiny red shoes accompanied by a score that evokes Lynch and Badalamenti also seems to show that Bogliano’s intentions to unsettle the audience come from a higher place than the usual spookshow that we are accustomed to.
A climactic showdown does offer something more familiar but for the most part this is a nicely sustained exercise in supernatural dread that mixes grief and terror to strong effect with a nicely unsettling climax. A fine example of a director whose work deserves to be recognised more over here.
Iain MacLeod