TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID (2017 - Spanish)

Studio:       Shudder
Director:    Issa Lopez
Writer:       Issa Lopez
Producer:  Marco Polo Constandse Cordova
Stars:     Paolo Lara, Juan Ramon Lopez, Ianis Guerrero, Rodrigo Cortes, Hanssel Casillas, Nery Arredondo, Tenoch Huerta Mejia

Review Score:

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Summary:

Five orphans fight to survive against a deadly drug cartel as well as a supernatural threat in a ravaged Mexican ghost town.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

While working on a fairy tale writing assignment, Estrella’s Mexican classroom is disrupted by gunfire outside the school. To calm her amid the panic, Estrella’s teacher hands her three pieces of chalk she says will grant three wishes. Following the commotion, classes are indefinitely suspended.

Street orphan Shine steals a gun and an iPhone from Caco, a henchman of crime boss Chino, who is actually politician Servando Esparza. Shine points the gun at Caco, who is drunkenly oblivious to the theft, but is unable to shoot.

Estrella walks home past a dead body on the street. A trail of blood from the body supernaturally follows Estrella into her house. Estrella discovers that her mother is missing, a probable victim of rampant drug cartel-related violence from Chino’s human trafficking ring known as ‘The Huascas.’

Growing lonelier and more desperate for food as time goes by, Estrella wishes for her mother to return. Estrella begins experiencing haunting visions of her mother as a ghost imploring Estrella to “bring him to us.”

Estrella catches Shine looting her house. Estrella follows Shine back to his hideout and meets his fellow orphans Pop, Tucsi, and Morro, who always carries a stuffed tiger. Shine refuses to feed her or welcome her into his gang, but Estrella stays with the boys anyway.

Caco comes looking for his stolen gun and phone. The other children escape, but Morro is kidnapped. Shine gives Estrella the stolen gun and tells her that if she kills Caco, he will let her remain in his gang.

Estrella sneaks into Caco’s apartment. While aiming the weapon, Estrella makes a wish that she didn’t have to kill Caco. She then sees that Caco is already dead. Estrella frees Morro as well as three other boys and tells Shine that she killed Caco.

Later that night, Estrella has another vision of her mother. She warns that the man who really killed Caco will be looking for Estrella, and Estrella must bring the man to her.

Shine, Estrella, Pop, Tucsi, and Morro bring the other rescued boys back to their rival gang leader Brayan. Brayan taunts Shine for having Estrella kill Caco when Shine should have been the one to do it.

Shine’s gang holes up in a new hideout. Estrella continues hearing her mother’s voice while sentient blood trails continue following her.

Estrella finds Shine crying over the fact that he couldn’t kill Caco. Shine confesses that he keeps Caco’s phone because it contains a picture of his own missing mother. Having heard about Estrella from Brayan, Caco’s brother Tio calls Caco’s phone to threaten the children.

After the kids decorate soccer balls, Shine tells Estrella more about his mother. Shine asks Estrella if she might use her last wish to remove the burn scars on his face. Estrella refuses, claiming something bad happens every time she makes a wish.

Tio captures Shine while the other boys stage an imaginary talent show. Estrella has another haunting vision of her mother along with other murder victims while hiding from Tio before also being captured.

Morro shoots Tio to save his friends, but Tio shoots and kills Morro. The other children escape.

Wondering why recovering the phone is so important to the Huascas, Shine and Estrella closely examine its contents. They discover Caco recorded a video of Chino killing a captive woman.

Estrella has Shine call Chino. Chino threatens the children. Estrella bargains to turn over the phone if Chino makes the remaining Huascas disappear. Chino agrees and arranges a meeting. Chino also reveals that he was the one who actually killed Caco because Caco could not turn over the stolen phone.

In the wake of the revelation that she did not kill Caco, Shine and the other two boys shun Estrella. Haunting visions of dead people chase Estrella, again telling her to “bring him to us.”

Fearful of Chino, Pop and Tucsi steal the phone from Shine. They show the footage to two policemen, but the officers refuse to act when they recognize the murderer as Chino.

Shine takes back the phone. Shine notices that the bracelet worn by the murdered woman in the video is identical to the bracelet worn by Estrella’s mother in a photo seen earlier. Shine is suddenly anxious to inform Estrella.

Morro’s ghost tells Estrella where to find the boys. When they reconnect, Shine tells Estrella the truth about her mother. Estrella insists that they must go to Chino or else he will kill them all.

After burying Morro in a box dropped into water, Estrella, Shine, Pop, and Tucsi go to the meeting with Chino, Tio, and another henchman in an abandoned building. Shine turns over a phone. When Shine refuses to reveal the password, Chino crushes the phone with his foot. Chino then executes Tio and the other henchman, explaining to Estrella that he honored his part of the agreement. Pop and Tucsi run away.

Recognizing the building, Estrella insists on finding the room where her mother died. Shine accompanies her. Shine reveals that he still has Caco’s phone because he gave Chino a decoy. Shine advises Estrella that wishes aren’t real. Estrella still chalks Shine’s cheek and makes a final wish that his scars disappear. Chino suddenly shoots Shine through his face.

Estrella flees. Chino chases after her. Morro’s tiger doll leads Estrella into a shaft. Estrella falls into a room containing numerous dead bodies, including her mother’s. Estrella tearfully connects with a vision of her mother when her mother’s bloody body briefly reanimates.

Estrella uses Caco’s phone to lure Chino into the room and trap him inside. The ghosts of his victims are heard killing Chino.

Estrella encounters Shine’s ghost. After their conversation, Shine enters the body pit room and sets it on fire. On her way out of the building and into an open field, Estrella encounters a tiger that escaped from a zoo.

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Review:

With “Tigers Are Not Afraid,” writer/director Issa Lopez takes audiences on a personal, ultimately universal exploration of a parent-child relationship in dark fairytale form.  What’s particularly unusual about this slightly supernatural family dynamic is that the parent happens to be dead, though this only strengthens how tightly the two are tethered together.

Among countless casualties created by Mexico’s drug cartel crime epidemic are the orphans left behind in ghost towns when families disappear.  Presumably in the tens of thousands, that unknown number rises by one when a day made bleak by a murder at school gets even bleaker after Estrella comes home to an unexpectedly empty household.

To calm the young girl from the chaos of gunfire outside their classroom, a teacher passed Estrella three pieces of chalk she claimed could grant three wishes.  Now facing the pain in her heart from loneliness, as well as the pain in her stomach from hunger, Estrella wishes her mother would return.  That wish comes true, although the woman returns as a wicked whisper in her ear and haunting vision in her eye, setting Estrella down a path leading toward the human traffickers who took her mother.

Before she can get to that goal, Estrella finds a new family in four fellow street kids whose families met similar fates.  Their little leader Shine isn’t anxious to allow a girl into his group.  He’ll make an exception however, provided Estrella performs one simple task: kill the cartel soldier working for the man who made them orphans.

Estrella is about to use her second wish to get this dangerous deed done.  In so doing, she sets off a chain reaction bringing her closer to revenge, but with deadly consequences for the small children trying to take down a big crime boss.

Not since Jennifer Kent’s “The Babadook” (review here) has a filmmaker so creatively captured both the magic and the misery of childhood fears and fantasy.  The bittersweet beauty and heartbreaking horror of saying goodbye to ghosts comes across through richly relatable drama anchored by empathetic emotion, only gently tinged with a hint of otherworldly fantasy.  Without resorting to flashy theatrics, “Tigers Are Not Afraid” knits a uniquely haunting tale that is entertaining, endearing, and urgently important because its topical social context desperately deserves deeper awareness.

It’s incredibly rare for any film to pull an exceptional performance from a child actor with next to no professional experience.  This challenge is additionally difficult in Mexico, where telenovela culture births unintended instincts to overact in aspiring young thespians.

Nevertheless, “Tigers Are Not Afraid” achieves no less than five emotionally honest portrayals of resilient kids struggling to survive a seemingly hopeless situation.  By itself, this feat qualifies Issa Lopez for elite status among impressive directors, though she humbly acknowledges the huge helping hands of her tandem casting team and acting coach.  This is phenomenal work by everyone involved to not only find five diamonds in the rough of 600 auditions, but to polish them into sharply cut gems who believably read as real people bearing unreal burdens.

Tackling the technical side of the film’s execution unearths nitpicks featuring less fine-tuning.  A guerrilla shooting style lathers additional grit on dirty settings draped in dreadful despair.  Those same handheld jitters contribute as much to disorienting distractions as they do to a documentary-esque appeal.  Tinkling piano keys also excessively expend more effort than required when the material carries so much natural weight, artificially inflated emotion is unnecessarily cinematic.

Although employed sparingly, visual effects aren’t always smooth either.  The thing is, they don’t have to be since the film’s true strength lies in its sobering reality.

“Tigers Are Not Afraid” possesses a distinctive ability to meld a movie with an individual’s mind, escapism with grounded emotions, and provocative fiction with unfortunate facts.  This contemporary, moderately chilling take on “Peter Pan” mythology may contain supernatural spirits, but it is a human story above all else, and doesn’t fail to fulfill the promise of its power as a fable about children aimed at triggering touchstones inside every adult.

NOTE: The film’s Spanish title is “Vuelven.”

Review Score:  85

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