Directed By Felipe Vargas

Starring – Emeraude Toubia, Jose Zuniga, David Dastmachian

The Plot – Rosario (Toubia) spends the night with her grandmother’s body while she waits for the ambulance to arrive, during a severe snowfall, Rosario is attacked by otherworldly entities that have taken control of her grandmother’s body, forcing her to confront the past while trying to survive in the present.

Rated R for bloody violent content and some adult language.

ROSARIO (2025) Official Trailer (HD) SUPERNATURAL

POSITIVES

Thrills and frights might be the single most definitive aspect to horror movies, but for my money a deeper symbolic narrative can spawn so much more relatability and accessibility to the fantastical imagery painted by gruesome gore, and “Rosario” is certainly no exception when it comes to underlining its dread with a deeply moving concept, imbedding this gruesomely gnarly story with deep-seeded meaning that utilizes the nationality of its characters to paint a devastatingly dark and unsettling conflict in the confines of an immigration story. While the execution and imbalance of this compared to the haunting horror certainly left more to be desired, Vargas has no reservations as a director towards painting not only the incredibly traumatic experiences of immigrants to be manifested back into something psycho-surreal, but also the compressing heft withing living with so many soul-crushing secrets, and it’s in that aspect where the film was able to at least temporarily stand out above other similarly structured movies with their own genetic make-up, proving plenty of meaningful merit in the concepts of a film that is so evidently more than just cheap thrills, leading to an excitingly bittersweet climax that finally feels like the movie is firing on all cylinders, even if it was a little too late by that point. In addition to depth within its screenplay, the film also makes the most of its minimized budget with practicality dominance among its make-up, prosthetics, and especially set designs, which each bring a three-dimensional tangibility to the kind of environments and entities that the Palo Mayombe religion unearths in the film. Considering this movie was made for less than ten million dollars, the movie never feels limited in its imagery, instead effectively penetrating the ocular senses of its audience with gruesome gross-outs, uncomfortable vulnerability, and atmospheric ambiance that effortlessly immerses the audience in the isolation factors of this established apartment, with Vargas doing some of his best directing while documenting all of the unsanitary conditions of the grandmother’s residence that feels so effectively articulated with unwavering intent to focus, creating a manipulative smell that I felt like I could actually sense while spending so much time in and around this disgusting apartment. With the exception of the movie’s final shot, there is nothing of any kind of artificiality to the creative concepts elicited in the movie’s imagery, and while that thought process is still an unfortunate rarity among today’s mainstream horror movies, cheaply produced films like these are its greatest argument against the manufactured, especially those gross-out gags that share a stomach-churning connection to the audience for their authenticity to familiarity alone. I also want to give much praise to cinematographer Carmen Cabana, who seamlessly makes the transition from TV to film with a meticulous complexity of camera angles and unorthodox motions that paint so much intrigue and uncertainty among the many things that go bump in the night. Cabana’s biggest impacts can actually be felt once those ugly things eventually materialize, with contorting and bending that challenges depiction without downright sacrificing it, and though it does lead to a little bit of shaky cam in the clarity of depiction, it also simultaneously stitches tension and suspense in the depths of the vulnerable and urgent sequences that are being produced, and considering she has worked on everything from “Ms. Marvel” to “High Fidelity”, her transition to the biggest stage here captivates some of the most lasting memories for my own personal experiences to the engagement, offering just enough deviation to artistic experimentation, without compromising the simplicity of what made the claustrophobia of the conflict stand out.

NEGATIVES

I feel like if “Rosario” came out ten years ago, it would be a trailblazing film for horror that inspired a legion of imitators, but unfortunately in coming out in 2025, its trope-filled execution and familiar storytelling feels borrowed from so many earlier and better films before it, leaving this one plagued by the frustration and predictability that ultimately define it. A lot of this can be blamed on a brief 83-minute run time that actually hurts the story more than helps it, with arcs pertaining to the aforementioned Palo Mayombe religion hemmed to the point of not even feeling temporarily explored beyond anything other than long-winded exposition dumps. Likewise, the characterization of the titular protagonist feels conflicting with the intention of investing in her, where the movie simultaneously wants her to be the smartest and dumbest character, for the sake of crafting the kind of conceived adversity that she frequently overcomes with ease, despite her knowing so little about the religion that she is currently tangled within. It makes it easy to say that the movie could certainly use another twenty minutes to further flesh out the expansion of its ambition, but I honestly just think that it attempts too many irons in the fire to come out clean on the other side, with as much as two films of material inspired within its script, which constantly feels like it jumps between its many bullet points before finally settling into the kind of film it should’ve been all along during the far superior third act. By not focusing so much on the family dynamic and immigration backstory during the film’s first hour, it essentially just feels like another psychological horror film, and one that disappointingly doesn’t have enough frights to keep its audience boredom contained from stirring, like mine did. On that front, this is sadly another horror effort that settles for an abundance of timely telegraphed jump scares, instead of meddling in the depths of its aforementioned atmosphere, and while jump scares are expected with any kind of mainstream effort these days, the kind manifested here lack such an emphasized impact to their deliveries that they immediately fall sad on arrival, with nothing in the way of fake-outs or frenetic energy to even accidentally catch the audience off-guard, all the while summarizing one of the more flatly-registering horror films that I have seen this year. If this isn’t enough, the characters and performances do very little to surmise empathy or investment to the circumstances that plague them, particularly that of Rosario herself, which is performed so underwhelmingly lifeless here by Toubia that I never felt any of the dread or vulnerability that should come naturally to her character’s predicament. I can commend Toubia enough for the physicality that comes with such a demanding role, but emotionally she doesn’t command the range to feel like she’s coming unglued psychologically with what’s being demanded of her, and when combined with some momentary dry humor during interactions with her grandmother’s body, or scouring interactions with a speculative neighbor (Wastefully played by Dastmalchian), becomes someone I dreaded spending another minute with, even if her distracting good looks gave me plenty to look at. Finally, the film is subjected to some laughably bad A.D.R and volume mixing that really eviscerates the authenticity of every scene, particularly when the camera work will zero in on the facial registry of Rosario, where I’m guessing Toubia screwed up quite a few lines, but the production didn’t have the budget for reshoots. If this happens a couple of times in a movie, I can forgive it, but I started taking time out of my engagement to count how many of these enhancements that I could capably spot, and though I have no desire to rewatch “Rosario” to capably spot them all, I can say that it will make for one hell of a drinking game somewhere down the line.

OVERALL
“Rosario” taps into the traumatically never-ending nightmare that is immigration, giving its stereotypical outline a deeper meaning to its material, but it’s ultimately cursed by imbalanced execution, underwhelmingly familiar horror, and a blandly lifeless leading performance from Emeraude Toubia that keeps its supernatural story grounded by mediocre execution. While the production makes the most of its minimized budget, with effective sets and practicality for special effects, the abrupt consistency of its hemmed storytelling continuously undercuts the unique thematic elements and momentum of the film, in turn cementing another lifeless corpse of conventionalism for the pile, instead of the immortal entity for originality that it deserved.

My Grade: 5.7 or D+