Historias Satánicas

The best way to describe this one is a Latino Creepshow with one of the original directors of 1999's Blair Witch Project. Pedro from Napoleon Dynamite is narrating horror stories as a wrap around character and each features a mostly Latino cast. While it's bad, it's also not very good or scary but more of wannabe Creepshow or even Trick of Treat 2006. There's a guy who can see some weird stuff with some kind of spell, a middle aged vampire married couple, a sucubus demon lady, and Pedro from napoleon dynamite.

This is something that you can wait for streaming or cable. The horror movie season is upon us and there hopefully will be better films coming soon.

After raiding a safe house, a group of detectives questions the sole survivor of the incident about his past and the others at the location with him launching him into stories about the participants.

The Good Stor(ies): El Vampiro-Stuck outside on daylight savings, a self-centered vampier unaware of the situation races against time and other distractions in the city to return to safety. This was a massively entertaining and hysterical segment. The goofiness and absurdity of the situations is matched by the physically intense situations that showcase how hilarious the whole thing is as the gags on display here prove to be clever, unique, and pulled off quite well. It's all due to his inherent stupidity that makes the situation endearing more than aggravating, and while the time limit he finds himself under disappears from the story to allow for some jokes it all comes together in the end to make this a highlight segment.

The Hammer of Zanzibar-Meeting up with an old flame, a man reveals that their past exploits have awakened a malicious being that has killed their friends and needs to be taken down before it's too late. This was an overall decent idea but doesn't have much else going for it. The central premise here has some fun times involving the mythical figures and their powers is a highly enjoyable storyline that has such an involved setup it's rushed through due to the unorthodox structure. This one really should've been a regular feature due to the kind of lore and backstory that's at play, especially since this one looks cheap and cheesy when it really shouldn't so it's got a lot to like even with some issues involved.

The Bad Stor(ies): Tambien Lo Vi-Trying to prepare for an upcoming tournament, a man finds his focus challenged by the supposedly haunted location he stays at to help him practice. For the most part, this was a pretty bland and uneventful start to this film. The core concept involving the inadvertent discovery of the gateway into another dimension and the resultant shocks that come about when encountering the spirits prove to be quite fun, but it takes way too long to get there as we're stuck with his interactions with his wife about the tournament or the pseudo-scientific nonsense about how the portal came to be which aren't all that interesting and make this feel far more dull and sluggish than it should've been.

Nahuales-Running away from an oppressive force, a man trying to carry out a clandestine operation for a shady figure to gain his freedom finds the supernatural entities he's from have caught up to him. This was a disappointing segment as it could've been a lot of fun. The inherent suspense of the situation involving the forces he's on the run from but won't show on screen gives this some intriguing work to start, and the exploits with the witch in the woods offer some gruesome visuals as this goes along. However, very little of this makes sense with the secretive nature of what's happening meaning nothing is spelled out and it's hard to know who's on what side or the point behind it which does lower this significantly.

The Traveler-After raiding a safe house, a group of detectives question the sole survivor of the incident about his past and the others at the location with him. This is an intriguing start but serves as a clunky means of bringing everything together. The story itself is fine enough and provides a lot of action at the end to wrap it up in an explosion of frenzied set pieces quite nicely, but on the whole, the varying tone that arises here due to the bizarre order of the segments that goes from serious to comedy and back again is rather odd. The whole interstitial segments setting up the story to be told are troubling as well with the awkward means of bringing up the next story, making this all quite awkward overall.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

Right, well of course I had not heard about this 2023 horror movie titled "Satanic Hispanics", prior to sitting down in 2024 to watch it. I had the opportunity to do so, and with it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to give the movie a chance.

I was intrigued by the movie's cover, as it does look interesting, but I have to admit that the movie's title is just abysmal.

But had I known it was a horror anthology, I do believe I would have skipped it, as horror anthologies tend to be dubious and questionable affairs. However, with having just sat through the entire 112 minutes of it, I will say that "Satanic Hispanics" proved to be somewhat better than your average horror anthology, not great though, but adequate for what it was.

I was for the most parts unfamiliar with the cast ensemble, aside from Efren Ramirez and Greg Grunberg. And I must say that Efren Ramirez was so well-cast for the role of The Traveler in the narrative that ties the segments together, and he definitely made it well-worth sitting through this anthology. The acting performances in the various segments were good, and that certainly counted for something and made it all the more enjoyable to sit through the anthology.

"Satanic Hispanics" has some good and less good segments, as it usually goes with horror anthologies. But I guess that means there is a chance that it hits a wider audience and there might just be something for everyone to enjoy here. And while I did manage to sit through the 112 minutes that it ran for, this is hardly something that I will ever return to watch a second time.

It should be noted that the special effects in the anthology are good, and they definitely add something good to the overall impression of the segments.

My rating of "Satanic Hispanics" lands on a six out of ten stars.

Satanic Hispanics is an anthology-horror movie directed by multiple well-known Hispanic directors. The name sounded intriguing and I definitely like the cover and therefore I was pretty excited to see how this would turn out. The almost two hour runtime seemed intimidating at first, but the original V/H/S movie (2012) was also almost two hours long and I absolutely love that. In general I am a huge fan of anthology-horror and after the entertaining opening scene I was immediately hooked. The humor is great and even though this movie is not labeled as a comedy, I think that the comedic aspects worked really well most of the time. Especially in the scenes that take place in the interrogation room. The effects are also pretty good and you can tell that the production value was solid. But somehow the movie didn't quite stick the landing in the end even though it had all the ingredients to be a very memorable anthology-horror movie. There are pacing issues at times and the segments are not consistent enough to entertain for almost two hours, which in my opinion is still too long for most movies. Overall I still definitely enjoyed the watch but the movie was not able to reach my expectations, but if you like anthology-horror movies, this is definitely worth a try. [5,7/10]

"Mixed bag" is the perfect term for this admirable but flawed anthology. SATANIC HISPANICS follows in the long tradition of presenting horror stories in the form of an anthology, usually with some very loose device to tie the stories together. Here, the El Paso police have captured a mysterious man who identifies himself as "The Wanderer" and as they question him about the extremely unlikely scenario of having survived a massacre unscathed without actually being one of the bad guys, he has the opportunity to share with the cops some very interesting stories about other "supernatural" characters he has known.

He tells 4 stories, two of them "serious" and two humorous. I'll say right here that the more humorous stories, particularly one about a vampire on a deadline, are by far the best. The two more serious efforts are marred by some pretty bad acting and sloppy resolutions. One should not have to scratch ones head and wonder "what was that ending?" The comedies (which I would argue the wraparound story is as well) are just a little tighter.

Each story is directed by a different Hispanic director, and that's a fantastic idea as well. Not every director comes off equally well, as I mentioned, but it's still a great chance to let these folks show off some of their chops. The budget is VERY low indeed, and it shows in every story. But if you can appreciate that this low budget is forcing some creative work around special effects, sets, costumes, etc...that might add to your appreciation.

In total, I think I appreciated the effort, but found the results to be spotty. 2 funny stories, 1 serious but interesting scenario and 1 complete failure (the politically charged middle piece just doesn't work as commentary, horror or even on the level of using editing to keep the viewer understanding the action) and an amusing wraparound story. In total, I'm exactly on the middle of the fence. If you're a BIG horror fan, in all its iterations, you might embrace this more than I did. As a horror fan, but not an obsessive completist, it's a "meh" for me.