Be Careful What You Wish For, Or, Tigers Are Not Afraid
This is a dark film, literally. Dark browns, shadowy, scenes in the slums of a Mexican city in the midst of a drug war, and how a child may or may not survive after her own mother becomes a victim. Having just seen it this evening I’d have to add I had trouble following it — the kind of film I may want to see again, having just looked it up now on Wikipedia to, as it were, compare notes on the plot. Interesting, sad, but requiring perhaps sharper eyes than mine to ascertain just what, exactly, it is lurking within some of the darker places.
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This is the Indiana University Cinema’s take on VUELVEN (literally “Return,” or so says Wikipedia), or in the U.S. TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID: A haunting horror fairytale set against the backdrop of Mexico’s devastating drug wars, TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID follows a group of orphaned children armed with three magical wishes, running from the ghosts that haunt them and the cartel that murdered their parents. Filmmaker Issa [image error]López creates a world that recalls the early films of Guillermo del Toro, imbued with her own gritty, urban spin on magical realism to conjure a wholly unique experience audiences will not soon forget. Del Toro, who presented the film along with López at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, described it as “an unsparing blend of fantasy and brutality, innocence and evils. Innovative, compassionate, and mesmerizing.” The two are currently working together on a werewolf Western. In Spanish with English subtitles. Contains explicit content, including violence, strong language, and drug references.
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So think Magical Realism and realize that what exactly is “real” may be called in question. The girl, Estrella, is given three wishes in the midst of a school shooting incident. Then when she discovers her mother missing she wishes to have her back. Well, there are such things as ghosts, or visions, and demands from the grave to “bring him to us,” the one, that is, responsible for Mom’s death.
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She finds other children orphaned in the “war” and, as a condition to join them, is told to murder one of the drug chiefs which, attempting to carry it out, she wishes she didn’t have to do — which may come true as well, but not without her still being linked to the death. Then for the third, at the kids’ leader’s request, she wishes for a scar on his face to be erased, which leads to more death and a chase that ends with discovering her mother’s corpse. And with the drug gang’s big boss hot on her heels. . . .
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These are some notes at the end of Wikipedia’s article: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 98 reviews, and an average rating of 8.22/10. The website’s critical consensus reads, “TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID draws on childhood trauma for a story that deftly blends magical fantasy and hard-hitting realism — and leaves a lingering impact”. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, [image error]based on 20 critics, indicating “Generally favorable reviews”.
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Peter Debruge of the Variety wrote, “The actors may be young, but the story skews decidedly mature. After all, in her commitment to realism, López allows terrible things to happen to the kids — including death in several cases — and that’s a hard thing to accept, not because it doesn’t happen in the real world, but on account of the melodramatic and manipulative way such tragedy is handled”. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Both the emotion and the horror might have taken still deeper root if the world of the movie felt less hectic and more coherently realized, if the supernatural touches and occasional jump scares welled up organically from within rather than feeling smeared on with a digital trowel”. Brian Tallerico of the RogerEbert.com wrote,”TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID may be imperfect, but you can feel the passion and creativity of its filmmaker in every decision. She’s fearless.”
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Oh, and yes, the “tiger” has up to now been sort of a graffiti logo, to be not afraid. But there is a real tiger too (what one might call a validation) at the very end.
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This is the Indiana University Cinema’s take on VUELVEN (literally “Return,” or so says Wikipedia), or in the U.S. TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID: A haunting horror fairytale set against the backdrop of Mexico’s devastating drug wars, TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID follows a group of orphaned children armed with three magical wishes, running from the ghosts that haunt them and the cartel that murdered their parents. Filmmaker Issa [image error]López creates a world that recalls the early films of Guillermo del Toro, imbued with her own gritty, urban spin on magical realism to conjure a wholly unique experience audiences will not soon forget. Del Toro, who presented the film along with López at the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival, described it as “an unsparing blend of fantasy and brutality, innocence and evils. Innovative, compassionate, and mesmerizing.” The two are currently working together on a werewolf Western. In Spanish with English subtitles. Contains explicit content, including violence, strong language, and drug references.
.
So think Magical Realism and realize that what exactly is “real” may be called in question. The girl, Estrella, is given three wishes in the midst of a school shooting incident. Then when she discovers her mother missing she wishes to have her back. Well, there are such things as ghosts, or visions, and demands from the grave to “bring him to us,” the one, that is, responsible for Mom’s death.
.
She finds other children orphaned in the “war” and, as a condition to join them, is told to murder one of the drug chiefs which, attempting to carry it out, she wishes she didn’t have to do — which may come true as well, but not without her still being linked to the death. Then for the third, at the kids’ leader’s request, she wishes for a scar on his face to be erased, which leads to more death and a chase that ends with discovering her mother’s corpse. And with the drug gang’s big boss hot on her heels. . . .
.
These are some notes at the end of Wikipedia’s article: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 97% based on 98 reviews, and an average rating of 8.22/10. The website’s critical consensus reads, “TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID draws on childhood trauma for a story that deftly blends magical fantasy and hard-hitting realism — and leaves a lingering impact”. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 76 out of 100, [image error]based on 20 critics, indicating “Generally favorable reviews”.
.
Peter Debruge of the Variety wrote, “The actors may be young, but the story skews decidedly mature. After all, in her commitment to realism, López allows terrible things to happen to the kids — including death in several cases — and that’s a hard thing to accept, not because it doesn’t happen in the real world, but on account of the melodramatic and manipulative way such tragedy is handled”. Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times wrote, “Both the emotion and the horror might have taken still deeper root if the world of the movie felt less hectic and more coherently realized, if the supernatural touches and occasional jump scares welled up organically from within rather than feeling smeared on with a digital trowel”. Brian Tallerico of the RogerEbert.com wrote,”TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID may be imperfect, but you can feel the passion and creativity of its filmmaker in every decision. She’s fearless.”
.
Oh, and yes, the “tiger” has up to now been sort of a graffiti logo, to be not afraid. But there is a real tiger too (what one might call a validation) at the very end.
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