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Tuesday, 14 June 2022

Huesera Review

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Huesera was reviewed out of the Tribeca Film Festival, where it made its world premiere.

Michelle Garza Cervera’s Huesera joins the ranks of frightening baby-on-board flicks from Rosemary’s Baby to Prevenge. It’s a Mexican fable about the pains of domestication that blends cultural flavors through mystical rituals, micheladas, and demands upon those with wombs. Horror is derived from the mental hardships of pregnancy and motherhood that are very real in women whose impending parental duties become intensely real. Cervera needs nothing more than tummy bumps, fetal fearfulness, and massive lifestyle changes to make Huesera’s unsettling point — but still adds a dash of demonic intervention for good measure. It’s not a particularly energetic or fast-paced pregnancy horror flick, but it still manages to make something of an impact.

Natalia Solián stars as expecting mother Valeria, alongside Alfonso Dosal as her music industry husband Raúl. Their relationship starts sweetly loving, with Valeria as a furniture craftswoman who can explore her creativity using power tools — then their pregnancy is announced. Solián’s performance emotively endures the change that women undergo once gifted maternal blessings, altered by how society perceives those not ready. Cervera brought her own experiences as a woman in Mexico City to the script she co-wrote with ​​Abia Castillo, as they both dare depict pregnancy as horrific, not triumphant, despite society’s rigid determination of any woman’s worth based on their abilities as caretakers.

Huesera does a bit more than comparable nightmares about childbirth by incorporating the traditional beliefs of Mexican families and Valeria’s still-aflame lesbian relationship with long-ago fling Octavia (Mayra Batalla). Valeria’s soon-to-be daughter steals everything about the woman’s identity before even emerging as a newborn since Valeria must cease dangerous woodworking and finally move past her romantic feelings for Octavia. Cervera does well to show us the short-haired punk Valeria (played by Gabriela Velarde) in flashback sequences that reveal a rebellious teen who dreams of being more than what the status quo allows — fast forward to Valeria and Raúl beaming smiles at the news they’ll be parents. Huesera toys with fractured timelines to demonstrate how pressures from aunties, religious teachings, and archetypal gendered boxes can cause someone with anarchistic passions to seek happiness in the parental responsibilities she once protested.

Cervera’s incorporation of horror elements favors the international flavor of arachnids and witches when Valeria begins screaming about visions of a ghostly woman whose bones crackle when she moves. The problem becomes the entity’s frequency, as Valeria isn’t necessarily battling a demonic force as mothers have done in maternal horror flicks like Still/Born. The spider-crawling specter gazes through windows or appears at farther distances because Huesera is about the fiction or fact of Valeria’s predicament. We’re supposed to question if the humanoid figure with protruding bone shards and a blurry face is a figment of Valeria’s depressive anxieties or an actual supernatural curse. Cervera successfully smudges those lines between Valeria’s viscerally disturbing reactions to the inhuman creature’s presence but doesn’t deliver much exceptional terror until a curse-breaking attempt with elders who believe Valeria is being stalked by “La Huesera.” What starts slower becomes another backloaded horror film that relies heavily, and maybe too heavily, on its finale with a cloaked figure and writhing pile of feral crawler-people.

Huesera’s tonal imbalance keeps it from breaking through “approvable” to “great,” due to the film’s simplistic emotional storytelling and pregnancy metaphors not being elevated by truly obscene horrors. That’s not to discredit Solián’s performance — her portrayal of the psychological breakdown within Valeria, especially when supporting characters revert to “crazy lady” accusations, is what keeps Huesera sustainably engaging. Cervera wages a poignant war against summoned evils and society’s imprisonment by “normalized” standards, yet does so without breaking barriers other equally mindful horror filmmakers have challenged elsewhere. Huesera tells its multicultural story with confidence, but it’s always at a simmer, never redefining or raising the bar.



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