(Written by Intern, Miranda Zampogna)
Even if a scary movie is all jump and no spirit, those flickering frights always seem to cast a spell on the box office, drawing in the masses. Likewise, Rosario sacrifices its heart for crowd-pleasing stunts. Simple, the premise starts after a blizzard delays an ambulance’s arrival, where the titular protagonist guards her deceased grandmother overnight as terrifying otherworldly entities seize control of the corpse and attack. The majority Latinx crew, led by director Felipe Vargas, concocts a kindred horror experience by acknowledging their community’s deep-seated influence of Catholicism. Also thrown into the pot is the tantalizing notion of a clash between Catholic superstition and sacrificial mysticism influenced by colonialist history. However, these ingredients, along with generational trauma experienced by Mexican immigrants manifesting as a familial malediction, poof into smoke. Instead, audiences are condemned to a slapdash theme of holding onto one’s identity and roots, ultimately secondary to garish goosebumps.
With an opening epigraph of sacrifice and darkness, the latter word stained a sinister red, a spectral tone chills. Beginning in 1999’s Brooklyn, a disquieting air hangs heavy during young Rosario’s seemingly joyous communion party, as spilled red punch pools around the celebratory cake, signaling a bad omen. The strange encounter she has with her bleeding and cryptically muttering abuela hints at unseen demons. As the Lord’s Prayer echoes with eerie chants, a shift to present-day Manhattan reintroduces Rosario as the now-affluent Rose (Emeraude Toubia), who lives the detached life of luxury of a Wall Street investor. Her carefully manufactured reality cracks after the news of her grandmother’s death, compounded by the earlier loss of her mother, Elena (Diana Lein). A blizzard isolates her, forcing a macabre overnight stay with her abuela’s decaying corpse until paramedics and her father (José Zúñiga) arrive. Descending into visceral horror, black veins distend across the dead woman’s face, and maggots crawl from her nostrils, one burrowing into Rose’s skin, marking her with a shudder-inducing curse.
An investigation through her apartment’s closet into a hidden, sewer-like secret room unearths unsettling satanic artifacts and witchy paraphernalia, hinting at a dark pact. Jars containing her childhood remnants—bizarrely including a used tampon—descend into campiness, diluting the suspense. The arrival of a neighbor, Joe (David Dastmalchian), seeking a seemingly innocuous air fryer, adds a layer of unsettling intrusion, albeit one that flatlines. He points out a devilish burn mark on her skin, mirroring those on her grandmother’s body, that becomes her breaking point to reverse the curse.
Pacing stumbles unevenly as Rose grapples with increasingly nightmarish occurrences. An exposition-laden Google search easily explains that her abuela was a priestess belonging to a mystical religion, where the hex can only be undone with a blood sacrifice. Turning into a chaotic scramble of readings from a grimoire, teleporting cadavers, and projectile vomit, the second act becomes an unintentional farce of checking off boxes, rather than injecting organic terror. Dead-on one-liners, like “let the bloodletting begin,” contribute to this, while the dialogue-driven plot is destined for distracted streaming from another room.
A midpoint revelation exposes the truth of Rose’s success when a demon visits. Lurching from a contrived, dual metaphor of sacrifice after an ego death, an appreciative change occurs in Rose, who gains a pay-it-forward mentality, as if this is a cautionary children’s ghost story. During the finale, she inconspicuously figures out she can trap the spirit for eternity inside her grandmother’s corpse. Yet, a late-stage twist, and one final re-emergence of this entity, confuses all logic.
Despite its potentially interesting iconography of Latin American folklore and exploration of relatable cultural anxieties, Rosario ultimately succumbs to a derivative routine that loses any sense of shock or surprise. Whilst there is enough goopy gore that exceeds the horror hallmark of disgust, the uneven pace never capitalizes on a genre-defining dread. Only Diana Lein’s performance offers a genuinely unsettling presence. For fans with a superstitious bone who revel in gross-outs, this 90-minute spine-tingler will be a hoot. Those who do not should be careful not to lose their popcorn.
Heed Rosario’s curse, for its ghostly clichés may haunt you when it arrives in theaters May 2nd.
