In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we explore the haunting beauty of Spanish horror with the ten best Hispanic and Latin horror films.
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We have visited the Far East to explore the haunted world of Korea’s offerings and tapped into the extreme horrors of our European neighbors in France. Now, it’s time to celebrate Spanish and Latino Horror, highlighting some of the finest pictures of the last two decades in honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month.
With prominent directors we all know creating classic gothic, foreign horror to social science fiction from Netflix that’s looking to expand its universe, the Latin and Spanish side of things has always been a hotbed for creepy entertainment. While Spanish-speaking horror shows are harder to find, I wrangled up ten fantastic features that tell foreign tales in a way the world can understand.
Buckle in and prepare — vamos a buscar — the finest Spanish-speaking films for your viewing pleasure.
1. The Platform (El hoyo, 2019)
Directed by Galder Gaztelu-Urruti, this is one of my all-time favorite dystopian tales. Described as a social science fiction, The Platform is perfection, and one of the best in the world of Spanish horror.
Goreng, our star, awakens in a cement box, a cell with a cellmate. His partner in here is Trimagasi, a fan of the word “obvio” and a long-time resident of what he tells Goreng is “the pit.” In the center of the pit is a hole with a rising and falling platform. Its purpose? Comer, obvio. This pit brings food from the topmost level, where the lucky ones are, to the lowermost level, where the rest eat any scraps left over.
Assigned to level 132, Goreng should consider himself lucky to eat anything at all, but his disgust at eating picked-over scraps keeps him from appreciating his lot. Little does he know, things are about to get much worse. He soon discovers that the prisoners are randomly shuffled each month to different rooms. After the first shuffle, he finds he’s been relocated to level 171, and hope for sustenance is fading. That horrific fate is still not the worst of it.
Entrancing, enthralling, and engaging, this literal chamber piece locks you into a stone box and deprives you, making every meal — no matter how paltry — a gift rather than a guarantee. With stunning performances, a curiously metallic and stringy soundtrack, and a seemingly simple concept that takes you over the edge, The Platform leaves you starving for more.
Obvio, Netflix and audiences agreed with me, and a sequel will emerge this fall for this stunning slice of horrific social fiction.
2. Piggy (Cerdita, 2022)
As someone who was called a fat person and is currently on a weight loss journey, Piggy punched me right in the gut.
Written and directed by Carlota Pereda and based on a short film of the same name, it arrived uncomfortably and jarred audiences. Sara is called “Cerdita” (piggy or little pig) by a bully, Maca, and her group of friends. An overweight teen living in a small town, she works at a butcher shop — only emphasizing how people view her as a piece of meat. Finding peace in the swimming pool, Sara wants only solitude and time in the water.
Even there, however, her bullies find and torment her, stealing her clothes and leaving her to walk home nearly nude, humiliated and leered at by strangers.
Escaping off to a side path to get away from prying eyes and shouted insults following her down the main road, she finds herself on an isolated street with a van. An unnamed man has gotten to her bullies, loading them up into the back of the van like cattle to be taken. Though Sara sees her bullies—and the bullies see her—Sara does nothing to stop the kidnapping.
She soils herself in fear seeing the man about to take his prizes, but he has no interest in claiming her as well. Instead, he leaves her blanket for her to dry off and cover up with. It’s the first act of kindness anyone has done for her. She watches as the stranger drives off with the girls, and she is left with a terrible secret.
Heartbreaking and brain-teasing, Piggy is an emotional rollercoaster. An exercise in empathy and forgiveness, this deeply affecting Spanish horror film will certainly test your nerves and morals, asking what we do with those who trespass against us.
3. Rec ([•REC], 2007)
Co-written and directed by Jaume Balaguero and Paco Plaza (who is responsible for more than one of the all-time great Spanish horror films), this testament to found footage is a Spanish entry that takes a skeleton news crew and puts them at the center of a horrifying series of developments.
Angela Vidal, a reporter with her cameraman Pablo, is doing a story on one of Barcelona’s local fire stations, covering the night shift for a show called While You’re Sleeping. In the middle of the tour, the station receives a call about an old woman trapped in her apartment. Seeing room for more action in the story, the pair accompanies the crew to the apartment building, where the old woman, upon being found, becomes hostile, biting an officer’s neck.
While trying to get out and get medical attention away from the unstable woman, all crews and residents suddenly find themselves sealed into the building by the military.
Claustrophobic, mysterious, and pulse-pounding, Rec was remade in America as Quarantine, but that film lacked the bite the original brought to the screen.
Sealing you in with a shaking camera in the pitch black, Rec is a reliable source for scares.
4. Terrified (Aterrados, 2018)
An Argentinian offering directed by Demian Rugna, Terrified is a supernatural thriller that keeps the scares coming and has a unique approach to how its ghouls arrived here and why.
It’s Buenos Aires, and Clara is hearing a strange noise. Coming from the plug in her drain, it sounds as though there are voices within, and they are plotting to kill her. Her husband, Juan, dismisses the sounds as nothing more than a noisy neighbor, trying to reassure his wife. That night, however, he is awakened by a thumping. Rousing, he finds Clara’s dead body hovering in their bathroom, slamming against the wall over and over again as if thrown by an invisible force.
Arousing Freddy Krueger vibes from the start and lacing every frame with an underlying feeling of discomfort, Terrified lives up to its title, leaving viewers to contemplate what horrors there are beyond our world and what those things may do should they ever breach into our fragile existence.
5. Don’t Listen (Voces, 2020)
This feature debut from Angel Gomez Hernandez urges you to cover your ears.
Don’t Listen follows a small family, parents, and their young son Eric. They have moved into a large house they plan on refurbishing and selling, all the pot went into this one so there’s nowhere else to go. However, at the beginning of the film, we see Eric sitting down with a counselor or psychologist. She’s there to help Eric, who has been hearing voices coming over the family walkie-talkie, believed to be the voice of his father, and it has been saying some cruel things to and about the child.
Victims of what Spiritism calls “psychophonies,” I won’t give away much more about where these mysterious voices are coming from.
An interesting concept from Spain that was brought to life by the mind of a curious child before being created by the adult director that could execute them, Don’t Listen is a whimsical look at the power of suggestion and the voices we hear from others, within our own minds, and sometimes, from darker places.
6. The Skin I Live In (La piel que habito, 2011)
Perhaps the darkest entry from Spain, The Skin I Live In is a body horror and captive nightmare that makes me flinch when I recall the story directed by the internationally acclaimed filmmaker Pedro Almodovar.
Plastic surgeon Robert Ledgard is a revolutionary. He has created an artificial skin resistant to damage such as burns, bites, and more called “GAL.” He presents his results at a symposium, but when he has a private discussion about illegal genetic experiments he has been conducting on humans, he’s cut off and suspended from his research. Back at his home, however, Ledgard has a captive, Vera. He also has a servant to help him with her, Marilia.
Due to his work being suspended, he asks Marilia to dismiss all his other staff. He has work to do.
Filled with the depths of human cruelty, torture, and obsession, The Skin I Live In is not a movie to watch if you’re trying to boost your mood, and it could have you clutching at your own skin as you watch the violation of the body by experienced, greedy hands.
A shocking body horror riddled with tragedy, this film certainly focuses on a dark, curious need to alter the human form.
7. Huesera: The Bone Woman (Huesera, 2023)
A peek into the madness of pregnancy and postpartum, Huesera was as much an emotional experience as it was a frightening one from the director and co-writer Michelle Garza Cervera.
We follow Valeria, a woodworker who, much to her excitement and her partner’s, is newly pregnant. Later, one night, Valeria witnesses a woman jumping from the building across from hers, shattering her legs with a crack. However, the woman gets up, a faceless, crackling terror that shakes Valeria. Before she can get a witness, the figure disappears without a trace.
She continues having frightening visions and asks for help, her aunt offering for her to go to a “curandera” or a medicine woman/shaman in Latin American culture. Though she’s promised relief, responsibilities in her future bring up more visions, and soon, a crackling like the marrow tearing of bones will follow Valeria every day.
A beautiful and heartrending look at the trials of motherhood, Huesera is an emotional and visual triumph with thunderous audio to announce the cracking of bones.
A fan favorite, this Spanish horror received quite a bit of love from critics due to its depth and nuance.
8. Veronica (Verónica, 2017)
Hit or miss, depending on who you ask, Veronica is a Spanish supernatural horror film directed by Paco Plaza (REC) and loosely based on the true events surrounding a 1991 death involving an Ouija board.
Starting with a call to emergency services from a young girl, we go back three days from this call, 15-year-old Veronica and her two younger sisters. With their father deceased, their mother works long hours at a bar to support the family, and Veronica is tasked with watching the other children. In school, on the day of a solar eclipse, a teacher says to her class that other cultures used to perform sacrifices or summoning during eclipses, giving Veronica an idea.
Veronica and her two friends, Rosa and Diana, take an Ouija board to the basement to conduct a séance. All of them have their reasons for reaching out beyond the veil, but all are too ignorant to know the consequences.
Well received by critics and lukewarm for audiences, the picture may have been a bit simple and underwhelming on its face, seeing as it didn’t use top-of-the-line effects. However, strong performances and writing make up for visuals, and Veronica is a decent haunt.
9. The Chalk Line (Jaula, 2022)
A Spanish psychological thriller and a feature debut for director Ignacio Tatay, The Chalk Line’s original title translates to “Cage.”
Paula and Simon live in an isolated, upper-class neighborhood. While returning home one evening, they find a mute young girl wandering the road. They take her to the hospital, but her family cannot be found, and the only clue is that the girl responds to the name “Clara.” Paula and Clara quickly develop a close bond, and a doctor suggests the couple foster the girl for a time until something more permanent comes up.
Clara comes home and only settles down when Paula and Simon draw chalk lines along the house so that Clara can move along. While this seems like an ideal situation, a woman from the hospital, Gloria, comes to check on the girl. Seeing the lines, she threatens to erase one, causing Clara to utter her first word at the woman.
The mystery here is only beginning.
An interesting concept that didn’t receive a lot of love in its reception, The Chalk Line is still a brain teaser, even if some claim it didn’t deliver through to its conclusion.
10. The Devil’s Backbone (El espinazo del diablo, 2001)
From the master himself, Guillermo del Toro, comes our final offering, The Devil’s Backbone.
Set in 1939, Spain, the final year of the Spanish Civil War we follow a young buy, Carlos. He arrives at an orphanage unaware of the death of his father where a skeleton crew of loyalists including a groundskeeper and teacher keep watch over the boys. As he makes friends and navigates life in the orphanage, he soon begins to have visions of an entity, and stories of a missing child, Santi, who went missing the day a bomb hit the courtyard.
Treasure hunting, sneaking around, ghosts, and treacherous adults are all part of the puzzle for the young boy and his companions, who are tugging at a thread that runs deep — but stick around for the very end.
It’s certainly a tear-jerker and makes a case that some souls deserve retribution.
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