Dir - Arturo Ripstein
Overall: MEH
A low-key bit of supernaturally-tinged Mexican horror, La tía Alejandra, (Aunt Alejandra), has a repetitious and foreseeable plot, yet its somber tone still manages to offer up some jarring creepiness. Focusing on the wealthy title character played by veteran actor Isabela Corona who arrives at her relative's house with mysterious, arbitrary witchcraft powers at her disposal, it eventually turns into a game of picking off those who upset or offend her in anyway. Such events are presented as accidental, yet her nieces and nephews grow more frightened of her which naturally puts a big fat target on their back for Corona to do away with them via some unexplained form of Brujería. She is able start fires, drown a guy in his own bed, make one person fall down a flight of stairs, probably possess a small child from beyond the grave, and, (in the most hilarious instance), make a set of puppets violently attack. Director Arturo Ripstein utilizes little incidental music, instead relying on eerie silence and synthesizer ambience here or there which compliments Corona's downplayed and therefor unnerving performance. The ending offers up some shocks in its matter-of-fact brutality, but the structure is too meandering to hold things together.
(1983)
Dir - Gilberto de Anda
Overall: MEH
One of the first films to be directed by Gilberto de Anda who rarely worked behind the lens in the horror genre, Demon Hunter, (Cazador de demonios), is a properly atmospheric Satanic werewolf movie that unfortunately loses its footing along the way. Set contemporarily in a rural Mexican village, it concerns a recently murdered, up-to-no-good-shaman who comes back from the dead as both his normal-looking self and as a murderous beast, depending on what the plot needs to make happen. It has the usual superstition vs. logic cliches where the town sheriff is under pressure to keep everyone safe and is unwilling to accept the, (of course completely correct), theories of the local priest who knows full well that Beelzebub is the culprit. Most of the set pieces are well executed, as is Antonio de Anda's cinematography which keeps the monster off screen until the very end where he makes an impressive enough appearance. The pacing drags though as characters argue with each other in order to solve a mystery that the audience is already privy to, plus de Anda throws in oddly placed, horny comic relief and some unnecessary side-arcs that further get in the way of the diabolical mayhem.
(1989)
Dir - René Cardona III
Overall: MEH
The Mexican Poltergeist i.e. Vacaciones de terror, (Vacations of Terror), sees René Cardona III following in his grandfather and father's footsteps, making his first horror movie in a family lineage of them. Unfortunately, the effort that he chose is undone by a wretchedly repetitive and hilariously arbitrary second half. As is the usual norm in haunted house films, (for whatever reason), all ghost-like activity follows little to no logical pattern and merely provides the movie with a handful of set pieces that are creepy for the mere sake of being creepy. In other words, every supernatural moment that transpires here seems as if Cardona and co-screenwriter Santiago Galindo merely threw a bunch of ideas into a hat, drew them at random, and then filmed the results. The laziest of cliches abound here as a family moves into a dilapidated, inherited, and remote vacation home that just the father and beneficiary of thinks is charming, only for the little daughter to find a doll that is possessed by a condemned witch. You can fill in the blanks from there and despite likeable characters and some steady momentum early on, the movie becomes a colossal bore once the doll shows up and the whole thing ends on a predictable whimper that of course would still wield an even worse sequel two years later.
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