Parents would move heaven and earth to help their children reach their highest potential. With that line of thinking, there’s an extra layer when it comes to immigrant families. Stories are often of a mother and a father making the ultimate sacrifice to come to America for their children to live in a land of opportunity (although that may not be entirely applicable in the classic sense these days). Felipe Vargas’s directorial debut, “Rosario,” combines various horror influences, drawing from the style of Sam Raimi films and the color palette of the “Insidious” franchise, among others.
If the film were that on its own, it would be viewed as a 90-minute homage to setups we’ve seen in the past. Alan Trezza’s story attempts to convey a relatable narrative in which you sympathize with why a particular set of characters had to go to such lengths. It does work to move “Rosario” in a different direction. While that works in spaces, it’s as if the film feels that it needs to give one more plot twist or hidden secret, too many to differentiate itself.
Rosario / Photo Credit: Mucho Mas Releasing
In the present day, Rosario (Emeraude Toubia) is a go-getting stock trader in New York. For a person who comes from an undocumented family, she embodies what they have sacrificed for. But Rosario hasn’t visited her grandmother (Costanza Gutierrez) in a long time, and her mother (Diana Lein), with whom she had a fraught relationship, passed away some time ago. Rosario has been receiving many phone calls from her abuela that go ignored. On the eve of a massive snowstorm, Rosario learns her abuela died in her apartment. Unfortunately, the paramedics are unable to arrive due to the weather, and Rosario’s father is three hours away (José Zúñiga). Thus, she’ll have to go to the apartment and sit with her abuela’s body until it can be taken to the hospital.
As we know in horror films, it is not that simple. Weird occurrences begin to happen in the apartment, which dovetails into a prologue at the beginning of the film when a younger Rosario is celebrating her First Communion. When she asks her abuela to come pray with friends and family, she states, “My beliefs are not yours.” On the dead body, there are markings and scars. What was Rosario’s abuela into exactly? The middle of the film settles into a “monster in the house” scenario where Toubia’s character is trying to figure that out. Drawing inspiration from Raimi, the practical corpse is reminiscent of 2009’s “Drag Me To Hell.” There’s also the point-of-view shot from Evil Dead, looking from the perspective of the demon and occult templates drawing from the Book of the Dead. In “Rosario’s case, the culprit is a misuse of Palo Mayombe. A curse is involved, but the nuts and bolts are that to obtain success and wealth, you have to sacrifice something in return. To what was given up, that’s something for Rosario to find out.
Rosario / Photo Credit: Mucho Mas Releasing
To Vargas’s credit, he does make use of the limited space within the dilapidated multiple-room tomb. As Rosario digs deeper into the mystery and things she may not understand, there are interesting jump scares and grounded, grotesque horror elements that occur to thwart her. After a bit, you’ll notice conveniences are popping up to help a person along the way who wouldn’t have a connection to ritual in this nature. It’s an attempt to rope back into Trezza’s overall story of not being embarrassed by your lineage and bringing those connections with you. Those themes, on their own, are compelling, but lose their impact when the film doesn’t trust that the viewer understands them. Rosario’s abuela had a neighbor (played by David Dastmalchian) who appears sparsely to give some creepy energy. However, he’s there to serve as a reminder to Rosario that she neglected her abuela in her final moments of life. The overall film and Toubia’s dialogue dive into the guilt she feels.
Trying to find out what opportunity means to you that incorporates your culture in a place where that may not be accepted is scary enough. In Vargas’s film, the real calamity is that immigrant families cannot experience the spoils of “the dream” together. Oftentimes, one person becomes the personification of what the people who came before them hoped to be. “Rosario” does delve into this a bit and blends into the haunts that make you recognize. Specifically, there’s a scene within the third act that is particularly heartbreaking. The film then feels the pull of wanting to keep the audience guessing, thus undoing the setup it had done moments earlier. Ultimately, it falls into a space of knowing the story it wants to tell, but moves in too many directions before it lands the plane.
