Mal de ojo

From an audiovisual point of view, this is a really successful film. Mysterious scenes promise a pure atmospheric experience, but the creators, in the pursuit of a final surprise, commit more and more illogicalities over time, and the initial incomprehensibility of the story, reflected in the rumor about the triplets and the witch, is therefore not only due to the mysterious atmosphere. The creators are equally trying to create an effective, well-thought-out horror film, but they run into the aforementioned illogicalities and an immoral or unethical conclusion that arises due to the initial incomprehensibility of the story, and as a result, it is also not certain whether the film is supposed to be a black comedy or a mysterious horror.

The Story: Parents ("Rebecca" and "Guillermo") desperate to save the life of their youngest daughter ("Luna") take Luna and her older sister ("Nala") to the countryside to visit the maternal grandmother ("Josefa") at her crumbling manorial estate. As the parental search for the cure requires more travel, they drop off Luna and Nala with Josefa while they continue their journey alone.

We quickly learn that the imperious and demanding Josefa has little patience for the outbursts of Nala. And Josefa's dismissive attitude toward her pre-teen granddaughter, while also dotting endlessly on Luna, bring Josefa and Nala to loggerheads at several points in the film. (Let's just say an iPhone pays a heavy price at a key moment in the film.) With Josefa at her neck, Nala quickly turns to the hired-help, "Pedro" and "Abigail," for assistance. With mixed results.

What follows is a rather well-done, but also rather conventional, story that feels closer to a Guillermo del Toro offering than Ezban's surprisingly off-beat and wonderfully surreal "The Incident" and "The Similars." The sets and lighting in "Evil Eye" are top notch, bathed in filtered light and the olive, hunter green, slate gray and yellowed color schemes that have become so familiar in the horror genre for the last twenty years or so. Yet at the heart of "Evil Eye" is a familiar folktale or parable: That a request for supernatural intervention in the present will require even greater sacrifices down the road. It was simply Nala's fate to be caught up in a transaction that was undertaken years ago, but now requires the debt to be repaid.

Indeed, it is one of Abigail's rural legends involving witchcraft that convince Nala at an early point in the movie that grandma really is a bruja. After enduring Josefa's dismissive and (frankly) cruel behavior, Nala attempts to leave the property with Luna several times, to no avail. Nala is convinced that grandma is literally draining the life out of Luna for her own "restorative" benefit. And as time passes, the old woman does indeed disappear into a mass of bandages that make her look less like an old woman than Claude Rains or a plastic surgery graduate. Nonetheless, it is this transformation, increasingly hidden from the viewer, that is the key to the last part of the film.

I can't say I was "let down" by "Evil Eye." It is a very good movie with a few neat twists, including the ending that I suspect many viewers will see coming before it arrives. But I do think Ezban, confronted with a much larger budget, was playing it very safe here. Despite the narrative frame at the beginning and end of the film, the narrative here is linear in a way that his other offerings to date have not been. And it is that loss of "quirkiness" that I perhaps miss the most. If Ezban was a sort of cinematic Jorge Luis Borges up to "Evil Eye," here he really is much more of a del Toro. That's not bad. It's just not what differentiated his work from the rest of the pack.

What I really liked was that the movie never gets boring. It is always suspenseful and you keep focussed. The movie has a good and suitable atmosphere.

Also the music is great. It is not dominant but still noticeable and always suitable to the corresponding scene.

The scaring effects where almost always predictable but still good and still scaring - at least in the cinema.

The story was good even if I expected most of the "plot twists".

I also liked the design of the creatures and other stuff.

Overall I would say it is a quite classic movie. Don't expect too much nee stuff or things you have never Seen.

Mal de Ojo (or Evil Eye for the English title) is a Mexican horror movie. It's actually a decent movie with some creepy moments. The horror scenes are well done and worth watching, gives the story a creepy ambiance. There are not much of those scenes though (or not enough in my opinion) and that's a pity because the make-up was well done. A bit more of those scenes would have benefited the story and rating of this movie. The acting was good and that from the entire cast, from kids to adults. The cinematography was also good, certainly for Mexican standards. It's worth a watch if you're into witchcraft and urban tales.

I hadn't heard about this 2022 Mexican horror movie titled "Mal De Ojo" (aka "Evil Eye") prior to sitting down to watch it. All I knew about it was that it was a horror movie. And that was essentially also all I needed to give it a go.

Writers Junior Rosario, Edgar San Juan and Isaac Ezban put together a rather enjoyable script for the movie. Though I had figured out the plot about 40 minutes into the movie, and it actually panned out as I had predicted it to.

The storyline and narrative in "Mal De Ojo" was good and entertaining. It was a well-written story and concept, and it provided me with genuine entertainment.

I was by no means familiar with the cast ensemble in this movie as I have next to no experience with the Mexican cinema. But the actresses and actors in the movie put on good performances.

Visually then "Mal De Ojo" was quite good. I liked the special effects in the movie.

My rating of director Isaac Ezban's "Mal De Ojo" movie lands on a six out of ten stars.