Studio:   Universal Pictures
Director: Felipe Vargas
Writer:   Alan Trezza
Producer: Phillip Braun, Javier Chapa, Jon Silk
Stars:    Emeraude Toubia, Jose Zuniga, Diana Lein, Emilia Faucher, Paul Ben-Victor, David Dastmalchian, Constanza Gutierrez, Nick Ballard, Luna Baxter, Guillermo Garcia

Review Score:

Summary:

Following her grandmother’s death, the daughter of struggling immigrants discovers the old woman’s occult practices may have cursed their family.

Synopsis:

During her First Communion party in her immigrant family’s cramped Brooklyn apartment in 1999, Oscar Fuentes promises his daughter Rosario that she will not have to struggle like her parents have. Rosario becomes unsettled when she discovers her grandmother Griselda secretly practicing strange blood rituals in the old woman’s bedroom.

Working as a successful Manhattan stockbroker in the present day, Rosario ignores repeated phone calls from her grandmother. When she finally answers, Rosario learns from Griselda’s building superintendent Marty that her grandmother died.

Rosario goes to Griselda’s rundown apartment where Marty escorts her inside to wait for medics to claim the body. Rosario notices unusual scars on her grandmother’s body as well as candles inexplicably relighting on their own. Maggots seemingly emerge from the corpse and burrow beneath Rosario’s skin through a rune-shaped burn scar on the palm of her hand.

Rosario meets Griselda’s neighbor Joe, who supposedly befriended her grandmother. Suspicious of the coughing man, who oddly knows about the scar on her hand, Rosario hastily dismisses him.

Behind bloody garments in Griselda’s closet, Rosario unlocks a hidden door leading to a secret chamber where occult rituals were performed. Among items including several skulls and a cauldron, Rosario finds baby teeth, hair, and a used tampon taken from her when she was younger. Frightened, Rosario tries to flee the building, but a harsh winter storm institutes a citywide curfew that forces her to return to the apartment.

Internet research reveals Griselda was practicing Palo Mayombe, a mystical religion fusing African traditions with Latin American Catholicism. Realizing that dark rituals involving human and animal sacrifices connect to the distinct scar on her hand, Rosario concludes her grandmother cursed her.

Rosario calls her father Oscar to report her shocking discovery. Rosario expresses her belief that Griselda cursed her because she sided with Oscar’s half of the family when he and her now-deceased mother Elena divorced. Oscar argues that Griselda was proud of Rosario and never would have done anything to harm her.

Determined to reverse the curse, Rosario returns to the hidden chamber where she encounters a haunting vision of Griselda as a demonic creature. From a grimoire, Rosario follows instructions for breaking the supposed spell, which causes her to experience more instances of terrifying supernatural activity.

Joe returns to Griselda’s apartment. In response to Rosario’s questions, Joe also claims Griselda was proud of Rosario as he could hear her praying for her granddaughter every night.

Now believing Griselda made a pact to protect her from an unknown evil, Rosario resolves to break that bond. Rosario’s efforts cause a series of haunting experiences, including an encounter with her dead mother and reliving Griselda’s memory of her harrowing trip across the American border in search of a better life for their Mexican family. The ordeal ends after Rosario’s final incantation forces the demonic spirit into Griselda’s corpse. Rosario then falls unconscious.

Oscar rouses his daughter the following morning. While cleaning the apartment together, Rosario finds her father in the secret chamber and realizes he was the person who made the deal with the demon, not Griselda. Oscar admits that at Rosario’s First Communion celebration, he broke into Griselda’s sanctum and used her magic to give Rosario the better life he felt he was unable to provide. However, the pact required a blood sacrifice. Discovering what Oscar did, Griselda took it upon herself to regularly use her sacrificial blood to protect Rosario from the entity. Oscar vows to continue doing so in Griselda’s place, but his first sacrifice initiates a monstrous transformation.

Possessed by the demon, Oscar attacks his daughter. Joe arrives to defend Rosario, but Oscar snaps his neck. Rosario uses the opportunity to kill her father, which seemingly ends the curse.

Six months later, Rosario’s continued professional success allows her to help her office’s struggling doorman Miguel open an investment account with his wife. After the couple exits, Rosario begins coughing heavily until a gnarled hand unexpectedly thrusts out of her mouth.

Review:

Whenever you watch, hear, or read interviews with filmmakers passionately promoting their projects, you may hear someone talk about how overwhelmingly inspired they were to develop a particular story for the screen. Maybe they’ll say something like, “This tale really needed to be told” or “I’m so excited to finally be able to bring this vision to the world.”

Oftentimes such statements are in service to routine movies, leading an unmoved viewer to wonder “why?” in response to any of the exclamations above. As in, what was it about this seen-before script that supposedly demanded producers pony up big bucks to make something audiences would ultimately be indifferent toward?

I don’t know if director Felipe Vargas or screenwriter Alan Trezza ever said anything of the sort with regard to their supernatural slow-burner “Rosario,” so I apologize for possibly linking them unfairly to this analogy. But the familiar formula this fright flick follows might spur someone to challenge any claim of its existence being essential with a request for quantification. As in, what is it about another run-of-mill haunting/possession yarn lightly seasoned with hollow horrors of flickering lights, something slithering beneath someone’s skin, and a cultural curse from an undefined demon that might seem intriguing enough to capture a consumer’s eye? Because for veteran viewers, if not for the film’s makers, “Rosario” doesn’t include many memorable moments worthy of earning much enthusiasm.

To offer one more caveat to my criticism, I’d add that there’s nothing overtly “bad” or lazy about “Rosario.” On the contrary, it looks terrific for a smaller-budgeted production, even more so when put up against comparable mid-tier thrillers that went from theaters to home video in under a month. It’s just that genre fans with voracious appetites for unique experiences can only stomach so many rehashes of a terrified person tiptoeing down a dimly lit corridor, and that number was capped long before Rosario Fuentes adds another dozen dark-hallway strides of her own to the fast-forgotten pile.

Back in 1999, two significant events took place during Rosario’s First Communion party in her Mexican family’s overcrowded Brooklyn apartment. One of those interactions occurred when her father promised to give Rosario the better life he felt unable to provide. The other was Rosario spying her grandmother Griselda engaging in odd occult rituals behind a bedroom door. Since “Rosario’s” characters only engage in actions with direct impact on the plot, both of these moments come back to influence Rosario’s adult life in major ways.

Now working as a successful stockbroker in present-day Manhattan, Rosario receives word that her grandmother died. She hadn’t seen much of Griselda since her parents divorced, when Rosario decided to side with her father, which estranged her from her mother’s side of the family.

Summoned to the old woman’s rundown apartment to wait for medics to claim the corpse, Rosario discovers a secret chamber hidden behind bloody clothes in a closet. What she finds on the other side of the locked door unsettles her further, as an alarming collection of skulls, cauldrons, and a used tampon from her childhood indicates Griselda had been involving an unaware Rosario in unknown incantations for decades. Coming to the conclusion the old woman cursed her for betraying her mother, Rosario settles in for a harrowing night of hauntings, eerie encounters, and recurring visits from David Dastmalchian’s suspicious neighbor, none of which end up putting much macabre meat on the simple setup’s skeletal bones.

No matter their scope, horror films aren’t required to reinvent the genre. At a minimum, however, they should do something to separate themselves from the morass of similar scares already out there, and Rosario’s rote arc culminating in an easily predicted revelation doesn’t cut it. Adding an angle of immigrant struggles to motivate the mystery almost infuses a differentiating dimension, except the movie disappointingly boomerangs back to boilerplate chills as soon as that element dissipates.

“Rosario” executes far better on a technical level than on a narrative one. The film can at least boast creative camerawork within its mood-soaked cinematography whose dark atmosphere has vibrant highlights. Techniques like flipping the perspective, tracking ordinary actions from overhead, and spinning lens orientation during a scene have no intrinsic value, except maybe to mildly disorient viewers, though they do showcase an inventive way to shoot a sleepy spooker where one person gets stuck in a single claustrophobic location. Had this attention to imaginative detail carried over to the fiction too, “Rosario’s” timid bite might leave more of a mark.

Review Score: 45