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| Images courtesy of Unearthed Films |
Back in 2014 following just a couple of years after both the
V/H/S and The ABCs of Death films revitalized and reimagined the
structure of a multi-director anthological horror short freakshow, Mexican
horror was itself going through a metamorphosis of sorts. Initially posited towards regional urban legends
or tales of folklore, the first of the Mexico Barbaro films emerged with
eight different directors coming together for eight separate horror short films
ruminating on the occult, the supernatural and the intrinsically Mexican
setting, culture and language. Predating
such fiery and explicit Mexican psychedelic horror fare as We Are The Flesh by
a few years, the film is considered one of the torchbearers of the Cine de
Terror Mexicano movement and was successful enough with Mexican filmgoers to
prompt not only international sales of the movie but the production of a sequel
in 2017 entitled Mexico Barbaro II.
While the first film was picked up by Dark Sky Films, a
subsidy of MPI Video, the official home video release of the 2017 sequel film
which brings back some of the filmmakers from the first film (including but not
limited to Lex Ortega) remained unreleased on home video for some time. Circa 2024 however, boutique MVD label
Unearthed Films who specializes largely in extreme horror films (they released
the 4K restoration of A Serbian Film for instance) finally stepped up to
the plate with a suitably stacked blu-ray edition replete with four making-of
featurettes of the separate short films while also offering a BTS press kit for
one of them. As with the previous Mexico
Barbaro film, the shorts are of varying quality and aspect ratios,
sometimes presented in 2.35:1 panoramic widescreen while other shorts fill in
1.78:1 respectively though the question becomes whether or not this new
offering has anything in it the original didn’t already do. The answer is a bit of yes and no.
This time, the film bumps up the roster from eight to nine
shorts and ranges from grandmotherly to grotesquely disturbing, touching on a
myriad of ancestral traditions and urban legends still being tossed around like
a hot potato among Mexican horror storytellers to this day. Among the directors are Carlos Meléndez,
Diego Cohen, Lex Ortega, Fernando Urdapilleta, Christian Cueva, Michelle Garza
Cervera, Abraham Sánchez, Ricardo Farias and Sergio Tello. The shorts, like many of the recent The
ABCs of Death offerings, vary in quality from director to director with
some sporting strong technical aspects in the cinematographic and practical
effects makeup fronts while others are decidedly less than stellar. A standout short involves a black magic rite
unleashed on a group of young schoolgirls with one character who literally
melts down to skin and withered flesh.
More or less a continuation of the predecessor despite a
different setup differentiating the shorts (animated gore effects in the first
versus onscreen credits in the second), Mexico Barbaro II is gross and
bumpy filthy fare that is distinctly of the new Cine de Terror Mexicano uptick
in extreme horror which won’t win over new fans but will surely satisfy
preexisting ones. The Unearthed Films
blu-ray is well put together with a fair amount of extras and there don’t
appear to be any technical anomalies with the blu-ray presentation. The film is offered in both Spanish 5.1
DTS-HD as well as 2.0 PCM stereo surround and is English subtitled. Fans of the anthological horror film, particularly
of the multi-director kind, while not finding much in the way of scares will
get plenty of old fashioned buckets of chum thrown at them and Unearthed Films’
have started out the year with a bang with this deluxe release of nine tales of
terror from south of the border.
--Andrew Kotwicki
