Tremors

I truly enjoyed several aspects of this film including the scenography and the environments used here. Great acting as well. I read other criticisms as accusations to the gay life on this movie but I believe the intention was to show us that could also be the hell dressed up in religion.

Tremors is not just a film; it's a gut-punch. It strips away the lies, cruelty, and pseudoscience behind so-called "gay conversion therapy" and shows it for what it really is: a violent, destructive fraud. This practice doesn't heal, it wounds. It doesn't save, it shatters. The film exposes, with precision and rage, how something masquerading as "therapy" is nothing but abuse dressed in moral hypocrisy.

What makes Tremors so powerful is its refusal to flinch. It forces you to confront the devastating psychological scars, the stolen years, the families torn apart. It shows, without mercy, how the attempt to "fix" what was never broken is nothing short of catastrophic. The performances are raw, the storytelling surgical, and the impact undeniable.

This isn't comfortable viewing nor should it be. Tremors exists to remind us that dignity, identity, and love are not negotiable, and that any attempt to erase them is an act of violence.

Cinema rarely reaches this level of moral urgency. This films is unforgettable because it doesn't whisper its message: it roars it.

Guatemala City is much like other prominent cities in South America: rich in diversity and burgeoning business. In the matter of gay men, writer/director Jayro Bustamante's Tremors depicts an Antigua state of mind: a family man who professes love for another man is in a world of hurt for his family and himself. Nothing is in the least progressive.

Such a narrow but not uncommon reaction by a local culture as offers a candid representation of the troubles gays can experience in a heavily Catholic and conservative small world. So authentic are the reactions, the film could have just as well have been about the effects of divorce on a community.

Pablo (Juan Pablo Olyslauer) comes home to a phalanx of family ready to condemn his choice of male love over his current heterosexual family life. Olyslauer's underplayed performance makes Pablo an audience-identifier of a person coming to terms with prejudice couched in family values.

Being unjustly called a pedophile, in order to separate him permanently from his children, may be the final indignity for a man who deserves not an iota of scorn for a choice not easily made and deeply felt for the grief he has caused his family and friends. It is rare to find such an honest portrayal of the difficulties a decision like his causes for everyone in his life. Without rancor or weeping and screaming from his family, Tremors quietly exposes the blindness of those surrounding him and his own uncertainty that he may have made the wrong decision.

The later scenes of his society's helping him becoming normal through therapy are the real pain of Tremors because his heart is not in the transformation, but he is willing to sacrifice his own happiness to be with his family.

Nowhere in contemporary cinema will you get as uncompromising a view of the unjust heartache attendant on choosing a societal imperative over one's happiness.

Set in Guatemala, Pablo (Juan Pablo Olyslager) faces a crisis in his life when he reveals to his family that he is gay and will be moving out to be with his male partner Francisco (Mauricio Armas Zebadua).

Pablo's wife Isa (Diane Bathen) gets the courts to issue a restraining order against him so he cannot see his two children. She eventually will threaten him that unless he enrolls in a gay conversion therapy program in their radical religious church, she will take the children to America.

Overall, I thought this drama was solidly acted with realistic characters, as well as ably written and directed by Guatemalan filmmaker Tayro Bustamante.

Jayro Bustamante's 'Temblores' bit into the burning themes of Guatemalan society, such as faith, homophobia, and the effort to maintain a good, clean reputation even at the cost of personal freedom and happiness. The movie captivates with interesting approaches and strong acting performances. Unfortunately, it squanders the immense potential for something vital and thrilling by never going deep enough on either topic and only loosely touches on the conflicting emotional life of its protagonist.