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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Peter Bradshaw

Huesera: The Bone Woman review – bone breaking Mexican horror of post-partum depression

Disturbing … Huesera: the Bone Woman.
Disturbing … Huesera: The Bone Woman. Photograph: Courtesy of Shudder

There are some nasty scares in this chiller from Mexican film-maker Michelle Garza Cervera who is making her feature debut: a horror film that doubles as a parable of post-partum depression, something with the creeping anxiety of Polanski’s Repulsion or Rosemary’s Baby.

Valeria (Natalia Solián) is a young woman who is longing to have a baby with her supportive partner Raúl (Alfonso Dosal) and when Valeria gets pregnant, she couldn’t be happier, or so she thinks. Her sister – married, with children in which Valeria has never taken much interest – is openly contemptuous of her conversion to the motherhood ideal, and her parents are themselves politely sceptical. A chance meaning brings Valeria into contact with an old lover, Octavia (Mayra Batalla), and Valeria is plagued with memories of the exciting, bohemian life she abandoned for the hetero-normal lifestyle; at the same time she experiences disturbing glimpses of strangers whose bodies jerk, convulse and click with a bone-breaking sound.

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