In an effort/promise to promote female directors, writers, and actors of color Welcome to Blumhouse in partnership with Amazon has released 4 films with a variety of melanin at every corner or stories with female leads. I thank them and applaud them for their effort. I will never take that away.
Now let’s get to a review of one of their releases
Premise: Beto (Tenoch Huerta) and Diana (Ariana Guerra), a young Mexican-American couple expecting their first child, move to a small town in 1970’s California where Beto has been offered a job managing a farm. Isolated from the community and plagued by confusing nightmares, Diana explores the rundown company ranch where they reside, finding a grisly talisman and a box containing the belongings of the previous residents. Her discoveries will lead her to a truth much stranger and more terrifying than she could have possibly imagined. (Rotten Tomatoes)
What I Liked: I liked the attempt at bringing Tex-Mex and santaria culture into the mix. There’s so much rich history, mythology and folklore to explore, it’s a shame it’s not on screen more often. The atmosphere of the film is heavy and the issues its tries to tackle very dense. The acting is more than just mediocre, which keeps the viewers interests. The real horror is that the film is inspired by true events. Things like this really happened and still happen today.
Madres has something poignant to explore and say. It just doesn’t quite get there.
What I Didn’t Like: B-Movie level effects can be forgiven if it’s story is done right and the cinematography lives up to what needs to be delivered. Madres suffers from a clear lack of what the antagonist is. Even if there’s a big reveal of who the real big bad is, the viewers haven’t spent enough time lingering on one antagonist to really fear how it will hurt our the unsuspecting couple.
Diane is who the film tries to drive the story through. She has the capacity to deeply learn another culture, even the mystical parts of it, but instead is speads her time bouncing between chasing ghosts and writing an expose on the harm of unknown pesticides on migrant workers. Because of this nothing really gets explored the way it should to really draw the terror out of it all.
Verdict: This might not be the strongest of the Blumhouse quartet, but there is definitely so great emotional work happening. It’s worth a watch. It’s currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video with subscription.