I want to talk about the role horror plays in your work. In the past, you’ve described horror as a “generous genre,” which really resonated with me. But I think it might surprise some people to hear horror described that way. 

It has been so generous to me, since I started watching and making films as a teenager. It’s the genre that embraces every kid who wants to break the rules. There are no expectations; you can be playful. I was in the punk scene for a long time, and it was very clear from the beginning that horror was a genre that made sense for me. I felt such a sense of freedom. And I love the process of making horror films, and the community that it creates. It’s so loving and open, diverse and radical, like the fiction itself. Horror gives you very tangible visual and auditory tools to give justice to feelings of isolation, gaslighting, frustration, asphyxiation. Horror gives you the tools to give feelings to people that are silenced. It’s a beautiful genre.

Punk and horror are both genres that offer a form of catharsis. They are art forms that make space for rage and discontentment.

Yes, both genres offer a space to put the darkness that you have inside into something else. And then you get to connect with other people that feel the same way. It makes you feel less alone. It doesn’t fix the sadness, but you realize you’re not the only one. Huesera connected with so many people that I will never know. But after the screenings, I definitely feel less alone. So many people approached me afterwards. There was a real sense of community there.

It’s very specific, the way the horror genre makes you feel seen. 

I had a screening in the outskirts of Mexico City in a city called Toluca. It’s a very violent city for women with a lot of femicide. After the screening, this family, two teenagers and their mom, approached me with tears in their eyes. You could tell, there was a story there. They just grabbed my hands and said, “Thank you, thank you.” That was it. But I could tell, there was a big thing that Huesera did for them, as a family. It was so beautiful. In those moments you’re reminded, this is why we do what we do.

The trope of the Bad Mom is very prevalent in horror, but few feminist maternal horror films are so empathetic and sensitive about the horrors of motherhood. I’ve read that, initially, you had unexpected feelings of judgment towards Valeria and you struggled with that character. Can you talk a little bit about that?

The seed of the film started with the story of my grandmother, who was a very demonized woman in my family, because she left a long time ago. That was the only thing we knew about her—that she left. And then, later in life, I started asking questions. I wanted to understand more of her story. My father opened up, and there was huge catharsis there for both of us.

I came to an understanding of this figure in our lives, and her story, and I was already doing horror movies. So, I felt I needed to give justice to these kinds of characters that are so hard to give justice to, because everybody demonizes them. That process took so many years, for us to humanize my grandma. It’s very complicated, because there’s still the pain of abandonment. But then you have to be able to look at the other side of the coin. So that was a process that was very hard to write about.

We had to ask ourselves, how do we get the character to this point? From literally begging the Virgin Mary to have a baby, to understanding why she decides to leave. That arc was hard to write, but then she started to exist, and she was a human being who deserved to be seen. It took me and my co-writer [Abia Castillo] a long time to understand who that character was. She was not my grandmother. She came from us and the actress [Natalia Solián], and then once we understood Valeria, it was impossible not to be empathetic to her. But it was a long creative process to get to that point, because there’s such a strong demonization of a woman who decided to leave her baby behind. But it was a beautiful challenge.

It must have been an emotional journey to confront the lore of your family, and to put yourself in the subject position of your grandmother to understand why she left, and what she gained from leaving. 

It was. At first I got a lot of pushback from my brothers. One of them was particularly bothered by it. “We don’t talk about her! Why are you trying to humanize this witch?” But they had so little information, because I’m the only one that went deeply into her story. My dad is gone, but we had so many beautiful conversations. He hadn’t been able to see the full picture, that things were much more complex, and she was also a victim. Now, my brothers are very impressed by her story. She has a name now. We know more about her. Talking about her changed our idea of her radically. It was not only about the movie. It was about having the conversations that are hard to have.

You made a very incisive remark about Rosemary’s Baby: “It doesn’t matter that there’s a group of Satanic cult members around Rosemary. The moment she sees her baby she’s going to stay, because apparently that’s something innate in us.” Your film allows a mother to be ambivalent. It’s so easy to tell a story with clear morals, but ambivalence is the hardest emotion to depict, and to live. As a mother, it was incredibly powerful for me to witness, because it’s so disavowed in our society. How did you go about depicting that ambivalence?

That’s my main goal in the job that I do, because we are so hard to define. There are always gray areas, and regrets, and the chance to find a middle point with every decision. Death is the only thing in life that is absolute. I’m not a mom, but I started writing Huesera when I lost my mom. That was the beginning of a long process that everyone goes through when you lose your mom. You begin to see all of their colors. I started to ask questions that I never asked when she was alive. It’s the process of humanizing and giving individual life to a mom.

Then, I read a book called “Mothers Who Leave” by Rosemary Jackson. She is a woman who left her family, and she interviews other women who have made that same decision. One of them really stuck with me. It suggested that the decision to leave doesn’t mean that the mother doesn’t want a relationship with her child. There should be ways for women who struggle with domestic life, or struggle with having contact with their children every day, to still have their children in their lives. Men do it all the time. In this book, there’s an openness to a more subtle relationship with your children, which is almost impossible to see in society. 

That’s what Huesera is about. You can still see Valeria’s love towards her baby, you can still see that there’s a huge connection there. The fact that she’s made this decision now, it doesn’t mean that she’s never going to come back, that she doesn’t have a chance to create another kind of relationship with her child. That was part of the radical thing that I wanted to portray.  

Another aspect of the film that is deeply radical is Valeria’s queerness. The denial of maternal sexuality is absolute in our culture, but you explicitly show Valeria’s pregnant belly while she’s having sex with her ex-girlfriend Octavia [Mayra Batalla]. That was an incredible scene.

That image was so important for us. We knew we needed to be able to see the belly. I feel very lucky, because queerness has been around me since I was fifteen. It always gave me a sense of freedom. There is a marked path that we are supposed to take, and it’s very scary if you don’t take it. But I’m very fortunate that I’ve always had these parallel lines, where something different is also possible. To me, that’s love. That’s the meaning of love—don’t be scared. If you don’t go down this path, you’re going to be okay, because you have examples of people that are so happy. I wanted to give that love to Valeria. 

It’s like John Carpenter’s They Live. You can tell yourself you’re happy leading a normative life, but you can’t deny your identity. And that’s the big crisis that’s happening inside Valeria. Huesera comes as a teacher, to tell her that she can’t deny her identity, that she can find a way to be happy with all of these areas of herself.

So that image of her having sex with Octavia was a really radical image. Why do we struggle so much with the sexuality of pregnant women, and of mothers? Once you become a mother, your sexuality is denied. And there are such stupid ideas about pregnant women not being able to have sex, that they’re too sacred. So that image became iconic to us. 

Did you face any pushback from producers, putting such a taboo image on screen?

When I first started developing the film, I was working with a producer who told us that the film was not going to be successful because we were speaking to a fear that was not common for women. He told us we were the exception, and it wouldn’t resonate with most women. He said we were making a big deal out of something that was very small. I fired him.

Every time I make a film I ask myself, “Where do I place the horror?” And of course, in a maternal horror movie, the horror is placed on the bad mom—a mother abandoning her child is horrific. But you place the horror on the mother staying with her child. The horror would be Valeria not pursuing her own joy. Did you always know that’s how the movie was going to end?

In the process of writing, we always knew that the progress of the monster had to be connected to Valeria’s self-gaslighting. It had to appear when Valeria was denying herself. The horror was never about the baby. It was about Valeria’s body, her identity. The commentary got clearer throughout the creative process. In horror, it’s very important to pick a clear theme. It’s very difficult, especially with your first feature, because you want to talk about so many things. So it was a filtering process—many things had to go away so that we could address the core of the film.

You absolutely insist on Valeria’s inner life. She’s the center of the film. One of the most shocking experiences of the shift from pregnancy to postpartum is when you’re pregnant, everybody’s attention is on you. And then, the moment your baby is born, you become disposable and everyone’s focus is on the baby. You are not yourself, you are the child’s mom. Your film is very specifically not about the child. How did you shotlist the film and think about camera placement to achieve that?

When the baby appears for the first time, it’s inside of a fridge. It’s a cold and dark place, and it was very symbolic to us. When mothers are not able to see their inner conflicts, when they’re avoiding their emotions and identity, they often put their babies in the darkest and coldest places. They’re not able to see their babies as human beings, because they themselves are not being seen as human. So it was very symbolic to us that when Valeria understands her struggles for the first time, in that moment she’s finally able to see her baby. She knows she has to work this out, because if not, the outcome will be terrible. And of course it’s a horror movie, so we took it to the verge of death.

One of my favorite shots in the film is at the doctor’s office, where Valeria, her husband [Alfonso Dosal], and her mother-in-law [Anahí Allué] are discussing Valeria’s mental health, but Valeria is left out of the frame.

It’s amazing you’re saying that because we really struggled with that scene. We lost the location two days before, and where we ended up, there was no depth. But it wasn’t about how beautiful it looked. It’s about literally what’s inside the frame and what’s outside. Valeria is outside of it. And then, when she appears, she’s in one little corner. So to me, that’s one of the best, most cinematic scenes in the film. 

Another one of my favorite shots in the film is in the tripling mirrors, of Valeria looking at herself expressing milk, completely dead eyed. She’s forcing herself to become vacant.

There is such violence in that loss of identity, but it’s so taboo to talk about. But so many women go through this—we have all seen plenty of images of mothers throwing their babies out of balconies. But nobody wants to talk about it, that there is anger and frustration and fear alongside love. We wanted to give justice to those feelings. One of the biggest taboos of motherhood is to admit to moments of regret, to wishing that you’d made a different decision. So we decided, we have to go there, and we show Valeria throwing her baby out of the window. That’s the beauty of horror movies. They allow you to go there. Going to that place allows Valeria to finally see herself, and to do the work that will allow her to see her baby. That’s the real climax of the film.  

The theme of this issue of Bloodletter is Lore, and your film was born out of the myth of La Huesera. How did you come across that story? 

A very radical friend gave me Men, Women, and Chainsaws by Carol Clover and a book called Women That Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés. I read it around the time I lost my mom, and it really resonated with me. The myth is about an elderly woman looking for bones in the desert, and she’s putting together a skeleton. Through a ritual with fire, she gives life to this creature she’s built and then the creature runs free. It’s a mirror of herself, this young, free woman running through the desert. It’s a very beautiful legend, and Pinkola Estés speaks about this process of looking for those pieces of yourself that you have buried deep down. They’re monstrous. They’re evil. They’re supposed to be wrong. It’s a difficult, painful, exhausting process of trying to understand pieces of yourself, and then the beautiful ritualistic process of giving meaning and understanding to it, and setting it free.  

We worked it out in a cinematic way, with bone fractures, and by creating something tangible, visual, that had a very specific sound so that there would be a physical reaction to it. Little by little, we started connecting the heart of the legend to the specifics of a character like Valeria. She’s a woman from a social class in Mexico City where rituals and Shamanism are just part of everyday life. In Mexico it’s a very common thing, and it’s not even particularly supernatural. We created a portrayal of a very specific way of life in a very specific place. It became very organic to blend this character and this legend together, in writing the script.

Can you talk about how The Bone Woman functions in the film? In the myth she’s a constructive force, building a life from fragments. And then in the film, she seems to be more of a destructive force. But she appears in the moments when Valeria is disconnecting from herself.

There was a crescendo that we knew we needed to achieve. So, the first instance of The Bone Woman comes on the first night, when Valeria can’t sleep after she gets the news that she’s pregnant. She’s supposed to be happy, but she’s doubting the decision for the first time. Then La Huesera comes. She crawls into her apartment, then she’s below her bed, and then she takes over her body. Every time, it’s closer. When Valeria’s ex-girlfriend appears, that had to be a moment for La Huesera to appear. Valeria is broken inside, and she needs to reconnect these parts of herself. We tied this idea to the image of a bodily fracture, pieces of bone that come together to form a whole skeleton. And the ritual gives the answer to the character. 

How did you land on the image of the spider?

I’m a big fan of the French sculptor Louise Bourgeois, and she has a beautiful analysis of the spider and motherhood that completely made sense for the film. And I love the texture of her work. All of it was the right aesthetic for the film. We connected bone fractures, spiders, and broken female bodies at the end. We had no money. We had no visual effects. I don’t like CGI. One night I just thought, oh my god! Bodies! Bodies! Bodies! I pitched it to the producers, and they loved it. And out of that idea we got an amazing choreographer, and started working with dancers—it was a beautiful process, really.

We had an incredible editor [Adriana Martínez], and we had to go through a very difficult process with VFX. There was no sculpting, but lots of removing and erasing, because these bodies were not supposed to have identity. They’re in the process of winning their identities, so we had to erase their faces. It was one of the most difficult parts of making the film.

But these bodies in the woods, in this beautiful area in Chapultepec, where the trees looked like spider webs, we had it on camera. We were so glad to have found it, because it would have been so difficult to create it another way with the budget we had.

Okay, true story, I shrieked audibly when I read the Deadline announcement that you were writing and directing a remake of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. You just finished filming! What can you tell us?

Honestly, I was a little bit scared about working within the studio system. At first I was doubtful. But it’s actually been an incredible process. It’s a complete reimagining of the film. We’re keeping the heart of the original, but it’s a legendary film and we all know it. I think the worst thing you can do with a remake is to try to remake it. You need to do a whole different thing. I really hope people like it, but I’ve been loving the process, and that’s the most important thing to me.

And how is it working with Maika Monroe?

Oh, my God, she’s incredible! She’s a pro. She and Mary Elizabeth Winstead will always be a mystery to me. They’re incredible. Directors don’t do the job of being in front of the camera, of taking on the bone and flesh and heart of these characters. I don’t know how they do it. I go in and I’m talking about a very specific note in a scene, and then they go in and bring so many layers that I never imagined, it’s beautiful. They love their characters, and they took so much care of them. I am forever grateful to both of them.

I’m so delighted by the trajectory of your career. Your stories need to be in the world.

Thank you. I really hope out of this I get the chance to direct one of my scripts again. That’s what I’m working on, and what I want to do next. I’m working on a very personal story that I’m writing with a Chilean co-writer called Ornamento. I feel very grateful I’ve had this very beautiful process of understanding what a studio movie is, but I also love the independent world, and I hope I can keep doing both.