Rosario is a film from director Felipe Vargas and writer Alan Trezza, and is a haunting reminder of why you should always communicate with family, know your history, and don’t mess with your grandma’s stuff. This is a film steeped in the culture of Latin Americans. Go into this film knowing that this is a story about a journey through grief, and an individual’s unique way of dealing with their loss. We all love finding similarities in our lives with what we see on the screen, but not everyone’s story is so easy to box up like that. Some stories are short episodes or span generations passed down to those who bear the responsibility of keeping it alive. The story of Rosario follows that generational span, having Rosario, played by the dynamic Emeraude Toubia, unravel the mystery of a sudden curse-like force in her life taking the shape of her long-deceased mother upon her grandmother’s passing.

Like the titular character, a successful stockbroker from humble beginnings who pays attention to the fine details, Rosario walks a fine line between worlds, in the case of the film, a horror movie centered on the consequences of ignorance, sacrifice, and one woman’s determination to fix the mess left by her family. Toubia plays Rosario as a straight-laced, no-nonsense heroine with a refreshing dash of sarcasm who tackles the curse head-on once she realizes that supernatural forces are at play, which the film doesn’t waste any time throwing at her. Seriously, the opening scene is of Rosario’s first communion, with the younger Rosario played by Emilia Faucher, has the setup already kicking off with Rosita finding a strange cut on her grandma and a sudden infestation of bugs in the room, inciting ominous music. On a second watch, those first five minutes are filled with symbolic foreshadowing scattered around the set, a trend that continues through the whole film. The first 30 minutes are almost exclusively used to build up Rosario’s character while also slowly dripping in ghostly elements as she starts to uncover a past she didn’t know about. That’s really one of the fun things about the story is that Rosario doesn’t know there is a mystery until the second half of the film, where she starts realizing things aren’t matching up.

Rosario stays on her toes and reacts more than panics the moment things go sideways. Vargas plays with the background a lot, so while Rosario may not see it the audience gets to enjoy wide shots of the evil spirit, Kobayende haunting her in a creepy, tight set right out of a claustrophobic nightmare. The big thing about Rosario’s character arc is that after the first 40 minutes of being terrorized and almost completely on her own, she has enough going from fleeing in terror at the sight of Kobayende to trying to fight back on sight for the rest of the film. It’s a rather satisfying reaction once Rosario takes up and trusts the tools, notes, and instructions her grandmother left her as she grieves the woman and the time away.

As fun as the evil spirit, reanimating corpses, and effects are, the real soul of the film is the narrative thread of grief and sacrifice that is Rosario’s mother, Elena, played by Diana Lein. Rosario rejects her heritage and is ignorant of not only her grandmother’s religion, Palo Mayombe(note Rosario is the first feature film to depict Palo Mayombe), but also her own mother’s life and has to scramble to piece it all together in one night while fighting Kobayende. It isn’t a case of Rosario distancing herself from people who hurt her, Elena and grandma Grizelda were loving family that supported her and in Elena’s case spent her dying breaths supporting her, but Rosario didn’t want to be there to see her mother deteriorate from sickness abandoning them in Elena’s hour of need. The most horrifying scene in the film isn’t even one with Kobayende, it’s the flashback to Elena’s life where everything the curse has thrown at Rosario comes to make a sudden, terrifying sense.

That said as fun and unique as the film is from a technical level, the pacing is a little off, and the biggest twist doesn’t get to really shine with it being placed in the last ten minutes. Toubia and Lein, whose flip flopping from the sweet Elena and the grotesque Kobayende, carry the film which as the leads is good but also leaves almost too little time for the other characters who fall flat, with the father Oscar, played by José Zúñiga getting the worst case, most of his scenes just being his voice over the phone leaving his relationship with Rosario more exposition then in scene. Joe, the neighbor played by David Dastmalchian, has some funny lines and comes in clutch for the end, but doesn’t really have much to do other than get his air fryer back, leaving him and Marty feeling underutilized. Marty, the apartment manager played by Paul Ben-Victor, plays tired old man to a T, and while he’s not exposed to any of the overt supernatural, you get the feeling he would have rolled his eyes anyway at Kobayende’s antics. There are a few lines that come off as corny, but they don’t subtract from the enjoyment of the film as it keeps moving forward and delivers on the scares for an overall stellar time.

The sound design also has a strange flip-flop being overbearing with the music in the scenes where Rosario doesn’t see Kobayende but the audience does. Rosario also talks to herself sometimes, it is used for comedy as Rosario copes; sometimes it’s a train of thought being used to overtly tell what’s going on, which, compared to the nuanced direction of having the story play out, makes those sections’ dialogue feel shoehorned in. The film gives you all the relevant details of Palo Mayombe for it’s narrative, and does so with a care and honor not usually seen for these topics by mainstream studios, but explaining an entire syncretic religion in a few minutes and keeping a story moving is no easy task as a result Rosario spreads out the information across it’s runtime for a much more immersive experience. That said, the cinematography goes hard for a small production, an 11 out of 10 with limited sets and a micro cast. Rosario is firing on all cylinders, utilizing light, backgrounds, effects, and raw texture sometimes to immerse the viewer into Rosario’s life.

4 out of 5 stars.

Rosario follows the story of Rosario Fuentes, played by Emeradue Toubia, a successful stockbroker who goes to watch over her grandmother’s body after her passing, having lost contact with her after her mother’s death. While on corpse sitting duty Rosario uncovers a secret room with an altar and discovers her grandmother was a Palero, a practitioner of Palo Mayombe, along with some ritual having been done that’s resulted in her mother’s ghost haunting her. The film embraces it’s Mexican American Heritage and claustrophobic set as Rosario is tormented by the evil spirit Kobayende whose come to collect a mysterious debt. Rosario is in theaters May 2nd.