Mark Reviews Movies: TIGERS ARE NOT AFRAID

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 12, 2019

The world can be a scary enough place, so why shouldn't a realm of fantasy, as frightening as it might seem on the surface, offer at least some comfort? That's the thinking and approach of writer/director Issa López's Tigers Are Not Afraid, in which a group of children, orphaned by the violence of the drug cartels, find themselves the targets of the same criminals who left them without a family.

This is horrifying, as well it should be, and there easily could be a debate about whether or not López has exploited or undermined terrible reality by introducing the elements of a supernatural fable to this tale. The most important thing to consider, perhaps, is that this is a story about children. They're fully aware of what has happened and what could happen to them, but they're also of the belief that it shouldn't be happening.

The idea of becoming an orphan and living on the streets, while being pursued by a gang of criminals intent on murdering them, must be as unreal a concept as the notion of ghosts existing in the world. If the former scenario can be true, surely, in the mind of a child, the latter could be, too.

Structurally, López's screenplay is a chase story, in which Estrella (Paola Lara), after discovering that her mother has disappeared, joins a group of orphans led by Shine (Juan Ramón López). Shine has stolen the pistol and cellphone of the gang member who killed his mother. The criminal wants the phone back, for reasons involving a criminally connected politician, who publicly offers promises to stop crime.

This is also a ghost story (Vuelven, which translates to "They come back," is the film's original title). Estrella, granted three wishes by a teacher trying to calm her during a shooting outside the school, summons the ghost of her mother, and an animated trail blood moving inexorably toward death.

It doesn't matter if such visions and omens are real (although the film does provide an answer), because they primarily serve as a means of portraying Estrella's grief, fear, and anger. For all of its simple plotting and fairy-tale trappings, Tigers Are Not Afraid does get to the heart of the situation of its young protagonists—alone and afraid as individuals but stronger as a group and more resilient for believing that the impossible could be possible.

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