Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022)
directed by Michelle Garza
cast: Natalia Solian, Mayra Batalla, Alfonso Dosal

This movie was kind of like a lazy river ride that every so often brings you through a set of rocky rapids. It is mostly gentle and quiet, but it really shakes you up when it gets rough. For me, it had the flavour of Dearest Sister from Mattie Do. They carry the same themes of an ostracized woman you root for despite her questionable choices and murky supernatural elements that require the main character to trust in others with more access to that realm.

I wish I knew more Aztec and Mexican mythology so I could have caught the things I am sure I missed. The film begins in Mexico on Tepeyac Hill at a shrine dedicated to Our Lady of Guadalupe, a very important figure to Mexico (especially Mexican women). Later on Valeria picks up roses for her mother on Mother’s Day, perhaps a reference to the story of Juan Diego and the establishment of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexican religious history. But before Our Lady, there was the Teotihuacan Spider Woman. The inclusion of actual spiders and spider imagery (such as the web like accents to the furniture Valeria makes) throughout the film hearkens back to the ancient goddess of the underworld, a foil to Our Lady of Guadalupe (a symbol of strength and bravery and credited with ending an epidemic).

If anyone has more details on the references to mythology I missed I would love to hear about it!

Anyway this film was a wonderful surprise with an ending that had more pragmatism in one scene than horror fans are used to seeing in multiple films added together.

Let me know what you thought of Huesera!