Vuelven (2017) Reviews

• Horrors are not unreal

  linkogecko2017-11-15

  How do you craft horror for an audience that knows a reality that is often scarier than anything they've seen on-screen before? If you're writer/director Issa López, you take that real horror and, by adding a little magical realism, you end up with a brilliant piece of on-screen horror where tangible humanity is scarier than ghosts could ever be. Set in a lower-class neighborhood of an unnamed Mexican city taken over by a criminal gang known as Los Huascas, who have left a trail of abandoned children in the wake of their many murders and executions, "Tigers Are Not Afraid" follows recently-orphaned Estrella as she tries to find a new family in Shine's gang of street children while supernatural forces seem to follow her. The film is very much a homage to Guillermo del Toro's filmography, with a symbolic insect right at the start of the film, magical chalk, scary-because-they're-hurt ghosts, clear references to well-known fairy tale tropes, horror elements used more to reflect on humanity than to scare and the overall style of mixing brutal humanity and brutal fantasy in an oddly hopeful way. It is also very much its own thing as, while Guillermo del Toro has usually chosen wars (specially the Spanish Civil War) as the perfect setting to showcase the evil in all humanity, Issa López's focus is squarely aimed at the own brand of evil of an specific human demographic: Mexicans. GdT's ghosts are often things of gory beauty; López's ghosts and corpses, covered in blankets and plastic bags are just savage (and savagely real at that), considering real drug cartels' penchant for dramatically using corpses covered this way to "send messages" and create their self-images in Mexico. López also tackles Mexican street children and their curse word-ridden slang, Mexican politicians and their unbelievable PR-cultivated images, Mexican police ineptitude and a number of other idiosyncrasies of this culture. The end result is a film crafted in a way that does not necessarily alienate those outside the culture, but is still very clearly made by and for people belonging to it. The way it is made is also worthy of note as López's approach to filmmaking is refreshingly total. She embraces set design, costume design (I particularly loved the character of Chino wearing what is now well-known in Mexico as a preppy "politician's vest" at a key period of the film), camera-work, music (some dramatic moments are clashingly scored with the most popular of popular Latin American music styles, to brilliant effect), acting and CGI to tell her story the best way possible. In these aspects, her unquestionable MVP is young newcomer Juan Ramón López, who plays Shine. In a movie full of surprisingly good child actors, Juan Ramón simply runs away with the movie in one of those on-screen debuts that captivates and makes the viewer hopeful for all future work by this force of nature. The movie is not perfect: some of the CGI, while brave, just doesn't work on either the technical or creative levels; the editing is a bit choppy at crucial moments; the script's usually high standard only makes the instances of bad plotting and dialogue stand out much more but these issues only hurt the end result minimally. While this is not Issa López's first movie (it is her third feature film as director), it does feel as something of an opera prima of a new stage of her career, one that "Tigers Are Not Afraid" suggests could be promising. As it stands now, to this Mexican cinephile, the film is a brilliant work that succeeds in making one confront and recognize personal and cultural demons, monsters, ghosts and tigers.

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• Movie Review: "Tigers Are Not Afraid" is a Heartbreaking, Horrifying Wonder

  treespaz2018-10-21

  Horror comes in all shapes and sizes but some of the most p otent imagery to bring the genre alive is when what you're watching could actually happen. In Issa Lopez's Tigers Are Not Afraid, we are exposed to just that, and in this case, the horrors of children living on the street in Mexico, desperately trying to stay alive while avoiding being snatched by the local drug cartel and sold off like animals. Of course, there is a dose of supernatural here as well but I'll get to that shortly. We meet Estrella (Paola Lara) whose mother goes missing and she is left to fend for herself. This is a frightening enough predicament for any child but in this setting, it's life or death. With no friends or family, she meets Shine (Juan Ramon Lopez), a local street boy who is basically in charge of/leads a gang of orphaned kids. Hiding in the shadows, rooftops, and back alleys to avoid being taken away never to return, Shine, Estrella and the rest of these kids exist day to day looking for food and trying to survive. It is only after Shine steals a cell phone from a cartel thug and at the same time Estrella starts seeing things do we begin to see where Lopez is intent on taking the story. While Estrella begins to see the ghost of her mother, along with all the ghosts created from this cartel war, the real horror lies in the lives these children lead. Estrella and Shine are mature and wise beyond their years, forced to be mature and deal with the horrific circumstances that life has dealt them. However, they are still kids, as are those they are 'leading', and there are many times during the movie where this pendulum of maturity and immaturity swings back and forth, creating moments that will break your heart and make you mad as hell. Paola Lara and Juan Ramon Lopez and incredible, grabbing every second of screen time and making it their own. Sometimes it is easy to forget they are just kids, their unflinching demeanor is almost scary, but when the masks fall off and their true ages are revealed it is sometimes very hard to watch. Issa Lopez guides these two through the framework of fantasy and reality with a steady and unwavering hand, sticking to her ideas and thank goodness, for the movie is wonderful because of her presence. The fantasy or supernatural part of the story is good, weaving stories of tigers and visuals of dragons into the plight of the orphans with ease. The dead even have a place, not hear just for visual shock value and the ending is wonderful and horrible as we watch it unfold. Kids often look to outside help when things get tough and that is no different for this group, except they look for otherworldly to guide them in a world where there is no one they can trust but each other. It was wondrous to watch Issa Lopez weave this story between the supernatural and real horror while child actors performed liked veterans and carried Tigers Are Not Afraid to dizzying heights. It was a magnificent, wonderful and devastating film to watch, full of sorrow and triumph in a sea of make-believe and real horrors that some children face every day.

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• One Of My Rare Tens.

  redrobin62-321-2073112018-09-30

  Maybe it's the soft spot I have in my heart for these "children in peril" films (Brazil's "Pixote", Romania's "Children Underground", Morocco's "Ali Zaoua: Prince of the Streets", Democratic Republic of the Congo's "War Witch", etc.), but Mexico's "Vuelven" (or "Tigers Are Not Afraid") definitely ranks up there with the best of them. Funny, touching and brutal, this film will make you glad you have a home in which to watch it. I can just imagine the suffering felt by other street kids in countries like India, the Philippines, Iraq, Turkey, Venezuela, Russia or even the United States. Their stories are still waiting to be told. Hopefully some brave filmmakers will get enough funds together to illustrate their plight as dramatically, and fantastically, as "Tigers Are Not Afraid."

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• Excellent!!!

  deniro32018-03-08

  I've finished watching the movie and I'm crying with joy, horror and sadness. What a shocking, real, charming, innocent, evil and disheartening movie. A work of art of the genre made of everyday reality, where an inoperative government, corrupt and alien to its governed has allowed such a real atrocity in Mexico. A lacerating, outrageous, violent reality, without law or justice and a childhood torn, strangled and murdered by interests foreign to its purity. Beautiful allegory of innocence, camaraderie and revenge of a people whose citizens, fed up with corruption and impunity, shout justice even if it is from beyond the grave.

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• Devastating

  dokrauss2018-03-02

  Wow. Just wow. A great movie about the destruction wrought by the Mexican drug trade on the innocent, in this case a group of kids left homeless and orphaned by a local drug gang. Not only do they murder the kids' parents with impunity, but they sell the kids into child sex rings. If it wasn't for the orphans' ten-year-old leader, Shine (wondrously portrayed by Juan Ramon Lopez) they'd all be dead or worse. Enter Estrella, a recently orphaned girl who brings with her three wishes, all of which devastate the orphans but bring a measure of justice, too. This is magical realism at its most tragic.

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