Tormento: It’s Not a Torment, It’s Just a Bad Moment

 

What does it take to make the great Mexican horror film? I’m not talking about those movies packed with cheap jump scares and special effects that steal the spotlight. We’ve seen that too many times, and it almost always leaves the same empty feeling. The horror that matters today goes down a different path. It demands brutal dramas, stories that unsettle you and linger in the viewer’s mind long after. Something Carlos Enrique Taboada understood perfectly in his time, when he turned the everyday into something profoundly disturbing.

Films like Longlegs, Weapons, and Bring Her Back make one thing clear: the engine of horror isn’t visual tricks. It’s the intelligence behind the screenplay and the power of the performances. When that works, you don’t need to exaggerate anything else. In Latin America, there are solid examples. Demian Rugna has shown mastery of the genre with films like Aterrados (Terrified) and Cuando Acecha la Maldad (When Evil Lurks), where horror is born from the invisible, from what is never fully explained.

In that context, Tormento feels like an opportunity that falls short halfway. Olallo Rubio achieves something undeniable: the setting works. The sound envelops you. The lighting builds an atmosphere that is genuinely unsettling at times. Mexico has nocturnal scenarios that seem made for horror, spaces loaded with history, silence, anguish, and something that can’t quite be named. There is powerful raw material here.

The problem appears as the story progresses. It becomes predictable. The narrative doesn’t take risks. It feels restrained, as if it never dares to cross that line where horror stops being comfortable. The plot falls into simplicity and loses strength precisely when it should tighten its grip.

Natalia Solián bursts in with a performance that holds nothing back. She pushes the film toward another level. Her commitment is total, visceral. Her presence carries entire scenes. Her interpretation has an intensity that occasionally recalls the expressionism of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

The lighting, the atmosphere, and Solián’s overflowing energy build something that at moments comes close to being memorable. But it doesn’t quite get there. The story lacks the necessary weight. It’s missing depth, it’s missing risk, it’s missing conviction. Everything remains an exercise that feels incomplete, almost amateurish, like the horror is right there, ready to be unleashed, but someone decided to stop it just before the final blow.