“I’m getting goosebumps just talking about it,” Rosa Parra admits, reflecting on the power of Spanish-language horror. That sentiment captures the essence of this week’s Critical Thinking episode, where Tomatometer-approved critics Rosa Parra, Carlos Aguilar, and Manuel Betancourt spotlight Spanish-language horror cinema during Hispanic Heritage Month. From the 1931 Spanish Dracula to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth and Amat Escalante’s The Untamed, the conversation reveals how these films go beyond just scares and preserve history and amplify Hispanic culture and voices.
Manuel Betancourt on La Llorona: I think this is one of the things that a lot of contemporary Latin American filmmakers are doing, which is they’re grounding their horrors in embodied histories. These are metaphors, but they’re metaphors that are really grounded and visceral, and so by the time this film unleashes all of its horrors, you do leave learning more about this country, about this dictator, and also about complicity.
Carlos Aguilar: I would encourage people who like horror to venture out in watching horror films from other countries, in this case in Spanish, whether that’s from Spain or Latin America, because I think that it reveals different things about what people in other countries find terrifying. It’s always been reasonable to see the horror tropes being explored from perspectives that we might not often see or even think about.
Rosa Parra: To me, the Spanish language horror genre has a deeper impact because of its language, because of its culture. A lot has to do with the social commentary, as I mentioned, but again, for me, it’s the language itself.
