Latin America has been home to more than just a handful of fantastic horror films. Rec, The Devil's Backbone, Pan's Labyrinth, The Similars, and other Hispanic horror films are some of the best the genre has to offer. Someone over at Epic Pictures must've thought the same thing. Coming this September, an appropriately-titled horror-anthology film Satanic Hispanics will be released in theaters, showcasing five films from five Hispanic directors who've all left their mark on the world of horror.
Horror anthologies continue to be an effective way to not only introduce a wide audience to the creativity of individual creators but to provide an "in" for future productions. The latter won't necessarily apply to Satanic Hispanics. While each of the anthology's contributors already has an established body of work, it'll be fun to see them collaborate in a way that celebrates their shared inspirations and backgrounds. Why should you be excited? We'll tell you.
Satanic Hispanics Has Big Names Attached
If you're a fan of horror films, chances are you'll be giddy at the sight of Satanic Hispanics' directors. Seeing as how their short films will make up a majority of Satanic Hispanics' runtime, it'd make sense to give a brief summary of who they are and what their previous works are like.
Mike Mendez may sound familiar to some. His After Dark Horrorfest submission, The Gravedancers, subverted expectations by turning what would've been a typical "drunken idiots get killed" story into something far greater in the film's climatic third act. His other films are a bit more comedic in nature if their titles don't give it away. Lavalantula and Big Ass Spider! fall into this category, specifically. 2016 marked Mendez's last two films prior to Satanic Hispanics, one being a cartoonish and violent flick starring Dolph Lundgren, and the other being a bank heist foiled by a persistent serial killer.
Demián Rugna is most closely associated with his Shudder-exclusive film Terrified. In it, a team of paranormal investigators is tasked with solving a murder that closely matches a similar case in the United States. What would've been another film that aped the success of The Haunting in Connecticut or The Conjuring instead spreads the scares across an entire suburban neighborhood, leaving the team outnumbered by tormented spirits. In addition to Terrified, Rugna also directed the comedic horror film No sabés con quién estás hablando.
Eduardo Sánchez is famous for co-directing one of the most famous found-footage films ever made, The Blair Witch Project. Outside of this, he contributed the comedic segment "A Ride in the Park" to V/H/S/2, in addition to directing Exists and Lovely Molly. Sánchez and found-footage filmmaking are inseparable by this point, and we can reasonably expect him to deliver a similarly-styled short in Satanic Hispanics.
Gigi Saúl Guerrero has contributed multiple films to other projects prior to Satanic Hispanics. Aside from directing the short film El Gigante, a surprisingly dark story involving cannibalism and luchadors, she also collaborated with Blumhouse to produce both Bingo Hell and Culture Shock for Prime Video and Hulu, respectively.
Lastly, we have Alejandro Brugués. In addition to directing segments for both ABCs of Death 2 and Nightmare Cinema, Brugués also directed the comedic zombie film Juan of the Dead and the Hulu-exclusive Blumhouse production Pooka Lives!.
Satanic Hispanics Will Focus on Folklore
If the directors involved with Satanic Hispanics weren't enough to excite you, the thread that connects their individual segments should. Like other horror anthologies, a framing narrative will be implemented in order to naturally transition from one segment to the next. The theme of Satanic Hispanics — if the title was slightly misleading — will be Latin American folklore. Following a series of murders in an El Paso home, the police find only one survivor who calls himself The Traveler. As they interrogate The Traveler, he spins stories that take direct inspiration from legends all across the continent.
The decision to focus on this was due to a culmination of factors. Primarily, Satanic Hispanics is meant to be a celebration of the unique and varied cultures present throughout Latin America, with each director involved hailing from a different region. Alejandro Bruges is tied to Argentina and Eduardo Sanchez was born in Cuba, for example. On top of this, the film's theatrical release during Hispanic Heritage Month only adds to the celebratory nature of the production.
Another reason why the film will focus on folklore was explained by one of its directors. Mike Mendez spoke to Entertainment Weekly about how Satanic Hispanics came to be, stating that a lot of Hispanic projects "are about the cartels and the border." In a refreshing deviation from these grim topics, Satanic Hispanics will be "a fun horror movie that happened to be about Latin lore," one that uses its inspirations in service of delivering great scares.
You really ought to be excited for Satanic Hispanics. Everyone involved with the film's production has a fairly solid filmography and combined with the general enthusiasm for the film's creation, it's practically guaranteed to be a fun thrill ride. On top of that, you'll get to see some of the lesser-known aspects of Hispanic culture come to life on the big screen, all while broadening your horizons in an entertaining way. What more could you want?