México Bárbaro

No pun intended - this is a collection of short movies. And one that is ... well fantastical. Much of this is not really on the realistic side of things. Still it has themes that some people may feel a connection too. Or even some cliches (drugs and prostitution to name but two). As you can tell already, you can not be squeamish or sensitive. Well you can of course, but you can't be that and watch this and hope for the best or whatever.

The quality of the shorts is all over the place, as is the quality of the picture. Though technically speaking (also no pun intended) it is meant to look certain ways ... for certain short movies. Or segments, since this is one after the other ... with no apparent connection ... but that should not matter ... not seen the "sequel" yet, but I assume they had a bit more money ... will watch when I find it on a streaming service ... sooner or later ... the cover/poster is amazing too.

The quality of most of these shorts is actually pretty good in terms of camera-work and cinematography. The quality of the acting ios decent too, mostly. There's really nothing to earn a low rating on those grounds. If these are representative of current Mexican cinema, they're actually pretty good exemplars to praise.

Now...the stories and approaches to horror...well, that's another issue. A couple of them weren't bad, primarily the 2nd one, set in a haunted hacienda. But somewhere along the line, Mexican horror filmmaking seems to have equated horror with disgusting and off-putting. And that's a huge problem. When you leave your audience more queasy than scared, you've failed at horror. There;s a reason the genre is called 'horror movies' rather than 'disgusting movies'. Your core audience might be somewhat jaded to gore, but that's not really the reason why (most of them) watch.

Just on filmmaking grounds alone, there's a lot of promise for Mexican cinema on display here. If these filmmakers manage to substitute real horror for excessive viscera, I'd certainly love to watch what they put out.

(Also, several of them drag out shots and scenes for far too long. But that's an easily correctable issue.)

"The Omen" is a horror movie. "Bram Stoker's Dracula" is a horror movie. This.. Is not. This is a pile of trash. There's no suspense in the air, it's just bad acting, bad directing, bad cinematography, and there's literally no plot.

I kept waiting for it to at least get tolerable. I was bored and annoyed, but when I saw a child being abused, I was done. The directors are clearly sick and need a mental health screening. Again, there's horror films (which I love), and this semi-snuff film trash is not one. The only people who would enjoy this plot less piece of crap are muderers, rapists, and other general sickos.

I also don't mind subtitles. I have watched several great foreign films.

Do not watch this unless you want to be annoyed at the very least, or absolutely disgusted at the worst. If this film was matter, I'd use it to line a cat litter box.

I loved all the films, and each offers something a little different than the last. I'm looking forward to researching the directors involved and finding more of their works.

Mexican origin horror film, the first of which was produced in 2014 and consists of 8 short stories. Eight different directors were told to choose Mexican legends and they shot these legends from their own perspectives. Wild scenes and sexuality abound in the movies. Even though I watched the movie with a lot of prejudice, there were parts that I liked. In places, make-up and costumes were very amateurish. Names and directors of the short stories:

1- Tzompantli, Laurette Flores 2- Jaral de Berrios, Edgar Nito 3- Drena, Aaron Soto 4- La cosa mas preciada, Isaac Ezban 5- Lo que importa es lo de adentro, Lex Ortega 6- Muñecas, Jorge Michel Grau 7- Siete veces siete, Ulises Gùzman 8- Dia de los Muertos, GiGi Saul Guerrero

The second part of the movie was released in 2017.