Mal de ojo

Mal de Ojo starts with an interesting premise if you are fans of folk horror. Sisters Nala and Luna are sent to her grandmother while their mother searches for alternative healing methods for Luna's strange sickness. But Nala suspects their grandmother might be an evil witch.

Now, for once, I need to be pick about the title: Evil Eye. I really did not notice any correlation between the title and the movie's story. I wonder what was the Director thinking.

Nala is a neglected teen. Her parents only have eyes for her dying sister - understandable, but Nala's flaw is exactly this: she wants attention, she is tired of being left aside. As the story progresses, we see minor themes like parenthood neglect and submission in place, but these themes don't have a toll on the story's arc. The arc is about the folklore surrounding witchcraft and the likelihood that their grandmother is a witch.

The character Nala is a bit off with current kids, I don't know. I even asked my 11-year-old: "would you be that naïve?" She denied. I tend to believe kids nowadays are not that stupid or gullible; Nala does look like a smart kid, but she keeps struggling to act for no apparent reason other then being submissive to Josefa's demands. I doubt someone so "I do my own" as she seemed to be wouldn't try something different faster. I guess only Stephen King knows how to truly depict children.

Some facts in the movie are obvious, but what keeps the movie strong is Paola Miguel's and Ofelia Medina's acting. Their on-going clash builds momentum as the story becomes darker, building their characters and leading us to the climax.

A climax that derails the movie a bit.

Up to this point, Mal de Ojo, whatever that means, is keeping us hooked enough for the ending revelation. The story does add a bit of exposition "just because", which detracts the entertaining factor. For example, the scope of the witchcraft's influences seems to affect more than just the grandmother's house, but the story explains nothing about this situation.

To wrap up the story, a twist leaves the overall arc too dark. The final scene keeps the story with folk roots, which dissatisfies the audience, as we'd expect a stronger arc ending for Nala.

Mal de Ojo doesn't stand out as one-of-a-kind, neither reinvents the wheel. This movie keeps to its folk-horror genre, delivering a promising story that builds itself strong, but the ending might throw some people off.

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.

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" is one of the best Mexican horror films of recent years, Isaac Ezban has shown his talent as a director and now he comes with his best film to date. Ezban masterfully brings a script of folk horror to the screen, including witches and related themes with a touch of fairy tale. The production design is tremendous, the special effects are realistic and beautifully crafted, the skinless witch is incredible. The performances are good, highlighting the legendary Ofelia Medina. The cinematography is well done with several nods to the giallo. The filming locations are a success, both interior and exterior are perfect. It is worth mentioning that the film pays tribute to several horror classics such as "Carrie", "Suspiria" and "Hellraiser", achieving a nostalgic effect that is appreciated. A modern classic of Mexican horror cinema.

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.