(2025)
Directed by Mauricio Chernovetzky
Starring Jorge A. Jimenez, Frida Astrid, Siddhartha Tonalli

There are a lot of movies that are made just to give you some mindless entertainment, excitement, fun, and maybe even make you laugh. And that is not a criticism because we need those movies, especially in this day and age. But when a film takes a series subject, one that I hope no one would ever have to deal with, takes that trauma, those feelings of grief and guilt, and intertwine them into a movie with a possible supernatural element to it, I’m even more impressed. But let me just say, I have no idea if that is what co-writer and director Chernovetsky was dealing with when he and other writer, Alexander Ioshpe, came up with this story. No matter how they came out it, it is a very impactful story.

I usually don’t like to give any spoilers, but since this happens in the first 10 minutes of the film and is what the rest of the movie is about, it would be difficult to talk about the movie without mentioning it. If you don’t want to know anything about the film, then I would still say it is worth your time and stop reading now. But if you do continue, I do apologize upfront.

While his wife Alma goes off to teach a class on Aztec history, dealing with self-sacrifices to their gods, after putting their son Andrés off to bed, Juan is busying himself at his laptop, putting earbuds in so his supposedly sleeping son won’t hear. Juan is watching porn and is too busy and caught up in the moment to hear his son get out of bed and try to reach a toy in the bathroom, falling into the tub after hitting his head. When Alma returns, she finds Juan holding their dead son in a chair by the bay windows, with a dead stare on his face. That is the look of both grief and more so, guilt. Nobody knows the real reason Juan didn’t hear his son. Only him. Like adding gasoline to an already blazing fire, Juan becomes more and more withdrawn, not even able to attend their son’s funeral.

A few days later, Juan leaves early in the morning with a backpack and a small cooler, steals a little one-man boat, and peddles out to sea. We’re not sure if he is heading somewhere in particular or just going further out. But then he sees what looks like a toy that his son was trying to get when he fell. When he gets hold of it, it’s attached to seaweed or some sort of watery plant life, which he starts to pull more and more. When he gets this bundle on the raft, he finds his son inside. Alive. Now we know this can’t be his son. But to this grieving father, he isn’t questioning it.

The rest of the film is about Juan and his son, Andrés, spending their time on an isolated, small island. Juan begins to either realize that this is not his son, but doesn’t care, or really believes he has been delivered back to him. Why he doesn’t immediately return home raises another question in Juan’s thought process. But when he wakes up one night to find Andrés feeding on his hand, sucking the blood from a wound, Juan still ignores that something isn’t right. Or if he does, he doesn’t care.

Juan slowly starts to realize what might really be happening, still stricken so deeply with not just the loss of his son, but his guilt that he’s put on himself because of what he was doing at the time. In fact, while on the island, he’s haunted by the girl from the porn video he was watching, tormenting him even more.

Will Juan being able to escape this hell he’s put himself into? And what exactly is Andrés? And will he ever be free of these dark feelings surrounding him?

Juan is played by Jorge A. Jimenez and really lets the audience feel his pain just by the look on his face at any given time. The blank stare, the look of anguish, all comes across in his performance. Young Siddhartha Tonalli plays Andrés and doesn’t have much to do but does it well. Often giving that look to his father, never knowing if that is Andrés looking at time, or something inside looking.

This isn’t the easiest film to watch because of the subject matter. But once again it shows a film about dealing with grief and guilt, in possibly a supernatural way, or maybe this is all in Juan’s imagination. But it is done well enough that you feel the pain Juan goes through, which is what I believe the filmmaker’s objective was. Recommended, but it hits hard in the feels. This was another title that was recently screened at the Raindance Film Festival in London. You can head over to their website HERE.