Horror Present is a brand new sequence uncovering the tales of artists’ experiences with the supernatural, paranormal, and unexplained—and the way surviving it supplied new appreciation for creating within the right here and now.
For a lot of generations, the household of filmmakers Ximena and Eduardo García Lecuona has skilled a long-running phenomenon: When it’s your time to depart this world, you’ll get a telephone name from a member of the family that beforehand died.
“My grandmother received a name from her mom, and the subsequent day she died. Proper earlier than my grandfather died, he received a name from his useless spouse. When my uncle died extra not too long ago of COVID, he first had a chat along with his sister who had handed. There’s precise contact with the useless … it appears like them and you’re speaking,” Eduardo defined of the inexplicable custom throughout a current Zoom chat from his dwelling in Mexico. Whereas some may take into account it a household curse, the younger inventive doesn’t see it that approach. “For me, it’s not macabre. All of us die. That’s a truth. But it surely’s additionally a reassurance that our family members are on the opposite aspect ready.”
These mystical ideas of life cycles, eternity, and the permanence of family members permeate the siblings’ new horror movie, No Me Sigas (“Don’t Observe Me”), coming to Hulu January 1. It was written by Ximena (additionally behind the screenplay for 2022’s YA rom-com Something’s Potential) and co-directed by her and Eduardo. The movie marks a partnership between their very own manufacturing firm Maligno Gorehouse and style giants Blumhouse, marking the latter’s first unique Spanish-language movie.
Filmed within the siblings’ dwelling of Mexico Metropolis, the suspenseful thriller follows predominant character Carla (performed by Karla Coronado), a 26-year-old influencer who’s looking for a viral second by documenting movies of ghosts and paranormal occasions. To additional improve her reels, Carla strikes right into a notoriously well-known haunted constructing within the metropolis and pads her content material with some questionable pretend results for clicks earlier than realizing that true evil lurks inside.
“We had been actually impressed by all these tales of haunted buildings and haunted homes that we grew up listening to about. Within the film, Carla [fixates] on the fictional Transatlantic Constructing, which we meshed from quite a lot of these tales we heard rising up within the metropolis,” stated Eduardo. As he speaks, it’s laborious to flee the night-time metropolis scene splayed out on the massive image home windows behind him, giving an eerie illustration of the town’s haunted lore.
Eduardo and Ximena (who was caught in a author’s room for an undisclosed undertaking and unable to be a part of the dialog) had a selected spot in thoughts for filming No Me Sigas that they knew was haunted: a construction constructed within the Fifties the place a once-reigning politician was murdered. (Within the movie, the story is modified to a murdered actress from the golden age of cinema.)
“We managed to movie there for like 5 days; it’s the place we shot all of the hallway scenes,” Eduardo shared, describing the environs and the unusual results the crew skilled whereas on-set. “It’s a decently tall skyscraper, perhaps 20 flooring. On flooring 1 by 8, there’s individuals; flooring 9 by 20 are deserted, although it does have some squatters. Whereas we had been capturing, a number of the elevators stopped working, and one of many grips received caught for a number of hours. So we had been like, hey, no extra elevators. Let’s simply do the 17 flights upstairs. It had a vibe that was energetically heavy.”
The inside of Carla’s condo, the place the majority of the movie takes place, was a separate movie set that the crew arbitrarily picked out however quickly realized was haunted, too. As Eduardo described the spot, “It was anyone’s grandmother’s condo. She had died a number of many years prior after a psychotic break. [The family] left the furnishings from the ’60s and ’70s intact and hadn’t used the condo in all these many years.” In truth, a lot of the artwork route behind No Me Sigas was organically tailored from these discovered artifacts. One instance he famous was a ugly scene with some nails caught on the wall that was rewritten in real-time to mirror one in all their discoveries. There, too, unexplained phenomena passed off throughout capturing.
“There was a room the place me and Karla Coronado would get utterly sick each time we had been capturing in there. And once we left the room, we had been wonderful. It was laborious for Karla to do some [scenes] there on the finish,” stated Eduardo, who famous the actress tried her finest to make use of the power and play with it for her character. The opposite lead, Yankel Stevan, who performs Andres, additionally had one thing occur when he went dwelling at evening. “He noticed this child ghost that appeared to him in his condo constructing. He took a photograph and it’s fairly creepy,” Eduardo shared.
Naturally, the rating for No Me Sigas was vital for including a chilling ambiance and to push alongside the story’s suspense. The García Lecuonas employed composer Craig Davis Pinson to do the trick. Eduardo had identified Pinson’s musical instincts for the reason that two logged time in punk bands collectively after they had been youthful. In latter years, Pinson would go on to work with Chicago-based experimental noise makers Fats Pigeon and Eduardo labored with post-punk band Sacred State when he briefly lived in Los Angeles. Ximena, too, is a part-time musician who at present performs drums within the underground band Carmen Machina.
“That actually helped with speaking concerning the music as a result of we had been all on the identical web page,” stated Pinson in the course of the Zoom chat. They determined the character Carla would play guitar and be a fan of Mexican post-punk (even including a tune by stalwarts Grito Exclamac!ón to the soundtrack). Pinson did attend capturing days and tried to seize sounds from the set, however none proved fruitful. As a substitute, he attacked the rating utilizing adjoining avant-garde methods.
“I wished to deconstruct the guitar right into a language that’s extra associated to modern classical or summary music, giving this type of supernatural feeling that goes past the current,” stated Pinson, impressed by the scores Colin Stetson created for Hereditary and Mica Levi composed for Underneath the Pores and skin. To perform the impact, Pinson put vibrating intercourse toys on the guitar pickups and used simply intonation tunings. “It’s like a primordial resonance that’s in nature and in the event you hear classical devices performed in these tunings, there’s one thing actually arcane. It sounds nearly non secular and previous and historical.”
Pinson additionally relied on a retro classic Italian toy organ known as the Bontempi B1, which he picked up at a historic flea market in Mexico Metropolis known as La Lagunilla. “That flea market additionally has quite a lot of historical past and roots again in pre-Hispanic occasions. It’s a really sturdy cultural place the place you purchase used issues. It gave that sense of place to mirror the discovered objects from the bodily areas of the movie, and tied again into Mexico’s very non secular and really haunted historical past.”
Understanding how a lot deep non secular historical past they had been tinkering with, Eduardo and Ximena consulted curanderos, or healers, who did pre- and post-filming rituals to guard everybody within the crew. “It was eight hours of choices to pre-Hispanic deities,” Eduardo famous. The rituals passed off on Tepeyac Hill within the middle of Mexico Metropolis the place it’s stated the Virgin Mary appeared to a now canonized indigenous man, Juan Diego, in 1531 throughout a time of colonial occupation. “In Mexican Catholicism, it’s a really holy floor,” stated Eduardo. Even earlier than the Marian apparition, it was a web site of worship to the Aztec goddess Tonantzin who’s related to the goddess of fertility and creation, Xochitlicue. “So it’s a really energetically and spiritually charged place.” The healers believed portals could have been opened in the course of the course of of creating No Me Sigas, however closed them by extra ceremonial rites. As Eduardo lightheartedly conceded, “The shoots went nicely, so I believe it labored.”
Consulting trendy healers is one thing pure to the García Lecuona clan. Their grandmother practiced witchcraft and lots of members of their household are proponents of syncretism, “a gathering of pre-Hispanic shamanism with Catholic sensibilities and icons,” defined Eduardo. “We grew up with that and it received us within the paranormal, nevertheless it additionally form of made us normalize it. With No Me Sigas, the ghost pertains to love and household. And I believe in a approach the ghost tales we grew up with weren’t creepy, they had been simply truth.”
It’s a tenet that’s shaping the siblings’ subsequent, as-yet-unannounced movie undertaking. “We wish to work from the angle the place typically the ghosts and the witches and the rituals, they’re not the villain, however methods to face your monsters and your individual fears,” stated Eduardo, whose final mission is to take Latin and Hispanic traditions and horror tales to the remainder of the world. “In our Hispanic tradition the place we grew up with the paranormal in on a regular basis life, we wish to make horror the place these are instruments for the heroes and never essentially the issues we struggle in opposition to.”
No Me Sigas is on the market for streaming on Hulu beginning January 1
