Mark Reviews Movies: HUESERA: THE BONE WOMAN

Huesera: The Bone Woman, XYZ Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 9, 2023

Here's a film that mostly aligns with a growing trend of movies about pregnancy and/or new motherhood that see the experience as a kind of horror tale. Huesera: The Bone Woman fits into that mold for the most part, although the fear at the core of this story isn't necessarily one of being a bad, accidentally negligent, or somehow naturally unfit mother. Its concerns aren't about the terror of not measuring up to the role and responsibilities of parenthood, and in that way, this film feels unique among—and maybe even a bit more honest than—others in what's gradually becoming a pretty consistent subgenre of horror.

Valeria (Natalia Solián), the mother-to-be, is worried about becoming a mother, to be sure, although joyful anticipation seems to be her mood at the start. After what must have been—if an early scene is any indication—plenty of perfunctory love-making with her husband Raúl (Alfonso Dosal), Valeria learns that she is pregnant after an untold number of unsuccessful attempts.

With that news, it's time for the soon-to-be parents to get themselves and their apartment ready for a baby. Valeria is even building a crib by hand, because woodworking and furniture-making is her passion, and since her workshop is about to become the nursery, this very well could be her final project for the foreseeable future. While her family members joke and tease Valeria about how unlikely it seems that she would be a good mother, she seems more upset about and takes a lot of time to finish that last project.

Meanwhile, Valeria begins having visions, too, specifically of a woman whom she imagines has jumped from her balcony across the street, breaking multiple bones in her body. The figure appears more frequently, in nightmares and in Valeria's waking hours, leading the mother-to-be to believe that she's cursed.

The film is co-written and directed by Michelle Garza Cervera, making her feature debut. While the stuff with the ghostly woman with all the cracked and exposed bones is unsettling, the story here is more about digging into why Valeria becomes so terrified at the prospect of being a mother. More to the point, though, it examines what that fear says about some deeper regret and resentment about the more significant sacrifices she has felt obliged to make on the path to this point in her life. Meanwhile, an old friend—and more, as we learn—named Octavia (Mayra Batalla) comes back into Valeria's life, getting her thinking about the past.

In the process, we start to see how much of that life has become one of trying to live up to the expectations of others—whether Valera wants them or not. Despite some of the more generic bits of genre filmmaking and storytelling, Huesera: The Bone Woman is a perceptive study of self-repression, as well as, ultimately, a subversive statement about how nothing is worth that kind of self-sacrifice.

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