Satanic Hispanics

I'm Hispanic and I was so happy to know this movie was being added to shudder today. Have to say I'm a fan of everything horror related. The movie is 85% in English, so there goes the Hispanic part, and it seemed more like a parody than a horror anthology. I'm sorry, I wanted to like this, but the only good thing about this movie was Damien Rugna' short. Him and that short surely don't belong in this anthology at all.

His work here is definitely an 8/10, the rest of the movie is hardly a 3/10. If you want horror or at least something creepy, just watch the first short, you can definitely skip the rest.

I honestly enjoyed it. This is quite an entertaining comedy with horror elements that should not be taken too seriously. The 'Traveler' is a guy caught by the police after being the only survivor of a massacre. During interrogation, 'The Traveler' tells a series of strange supernatural stories that we then get to follow. Of course, the detectives don't believe him until it's too late. Sometimes the stories get a bit far-fetched and are all over the place, but overall, this is an entertaining horror-comedy that gets quite violent at times. The film is distantly reminiscent of the 'V/H/S' series of short episodes, so if you like 'V/H/S,' chances are you will like this movie too.

A police SWAT team finds a sole survivor (Efren Ramirez) after a mass murder of Latino victims. Police detectives Arden (Greg Grunberg) and Gibbons (Sonya Eddy) are interrogating him. He claims that he needs to leave in 90 minutes or else. He starts telling them ghost stories.

The wrap around story is "The Traveler". I like it and it puts in a ticking time clock right away. The first ghost story is "Tambien Lo Vi" and I like it. I like the whole concept of the light. Quite frankly, that could be a whole horror film on its own. That's coming next from Blumhouse. The second ghost story is "El Vampiro" and it reminds me so much of "What We Do in the Shadows". Again it would work great as one of its episodes. The third ghost story is "Nahaules" and it's fine. It's a lot blood and gore and horror makeup. It's above average work, but the story isn't much. The fourth ghost story is "The Hammer of Zanzibar" and it's not my first dildo fight. It's not even the second one and that concept is getting a little derivative. It would have work so much better if this came out a few years earlier. I would have laughed out loud at the sight of it, but as it stands, I said, "Oh! They're doing that thing."

This is as good or better than most B-horrors like Creepshow and such. Being a little late to the dildo fight party cannot be blamed on them. They probably created the idea well before those others came out. As for the rest, they range from very good to good enough. That's a very good batting average.

Satanic Hispanics is an anthology-horror movie directed by multiple well-known Hispanic directors. The name sounded intriguing and I definitely like the cover and therefore I was pretty excited to see how this would turn out. The almost two hour runtime seemed intimidating at first, but the original V/H/S movie (2012) was also almost two hours long and I absolutely love that. In general I am a huge fan of anthology-horror and after the entertaining opening scene I was immediately hooked. The humor is great and even though this movie is not labeled as a comedy, I think that the comedic aspects worked really well most of the time. Especially in the scenes that take place in the interrogation room. The effects are also pretty good and you can tell that the production value was solid. But somehow the movie didn't quite stick the landing in the end even though it had all the ingredients to be a very memorable anthology-horror movie. There are pacing issues at times and the segments are not consistent enough to entertain for almost two hours, which in my opinion is still too long for most movies. Overall I still definitely enjoyed the watch but the movie was not able to reach my expectations, but if you like anthology-horror movies, this is definitely worth a try. [5,7/10]

What is the problem with distributors? It's now 2025 and this film was released in 2022 yet it's still not available to watch in the UK on any streaming platform. You can't even buy it on dvd. I'm a great fan of Latino horror and especially Demian Rugna. Terrified was original and terrific. When Evil Lurks is probably one of the greatest unsung horror movies of the last 20 years. I'm sorry that I can't give a review but I wanted to highlight the ridiculous situation with the limited availability of some films. Some idiot needs to pull their finger out. I've even posted on the faq's here asking if anyone knows when it might be available in the UK. No response!