ROSARIO (2025)

Currently in select theaters from The Avenue Entertainment!
Directed by Felipe Vargas.
Written by Alan Trezza.
Check out the trailer here!!

Successful investment broker Rosario (Emeraude Toubia) has not kept in touch with her Grandmother after her mother passed away years ago. Since then, she has filled her life with work and has little time to remember where she came from and how she got to America. Rosario receives a call from her Grandmother out of the blue, just before a big snow storm is about to hit New York. But it is her Grandmother’s landlord (character actor Paul Ben-Victor) letting Rosario know that her Grandmother has passed away and since she is an illegal immigrant, Rosario should come and claim the body, lest it be caught up in the system indefinitely. Rosario arrives to the apartment to find it in complete disarray and full of ritualistic objects. Soon, Rosario finds herself trapped in the apartment with an ancient demon attempting to get out of the closet and strange neighbor Joe (David Dastmalchian) at the front door.

I wanted to like ROSARIO more than I did. I dig films that take place in one locale and for the most part, ROSARIO could be set as a stage play as the bulk of the action takes place in one filthy apartment. Felipe Vargas keeps things tight and tense for most of the film, giving ROSARIO a claustrophobic feel. Still, I don’t know where this elderly woman lives or how much she pays for rent, but having seen New York apartments, I know labyrinthine spaces like this simply don’t exist outside of movie-land. The apartment becomes some kind of odd tesseract with secret rooms leading to caverns and open spaces that simply don’t make sense. The rooms are decorated with all kinds of grossness and squalor, as if grandma hasn’t cleaned in a good decade or so. Simply panning around the apartment gave me anxiety as the filth and clutter overwhelmed my eyes and made me start seeing just one grey glob of mess all over the place. I know the mess was intentional, but it really made for an uncomfortable watch.

While ROSARIO tosses you into the action pretty quickly, it really doesn’t get around to addressing its main theme until late in the game. Basically, Rosario is supposed to be learning a lesson about how she got to this country and more specifically, the struggles her grandmother and mother went through as they crossed the border. Sure this is a thorny issue these days, but all politics aside, it feels as if this lesson Rosario is supposed to learn gets lost in the mess of grandma’s apartment for a big old chunk of the movie. Much more time is spent with Rosario wandering around the apartment, discovering the rooms, uncovering her grandma’s magic, and then quickly learning how to do the same magic with nothing but and old book as a guide. Rosario’s transformation from hedge fund advisor to bruja is way too quick for my taste and for someone who ignored her Mexican heritage for such a long part of her life, she picks up ancient magical spellcasting skills way too easily.

That said, I did appreciate the practical effects. There are a lot of really uncomfortable body horror scenes of the rotting grandma and some even more uncomfortable scenes with worms, maggots, and cockroaches. All of them hit the mark on making my skin crawl. The full body suit of the demon is pretty impressive as well.

It was also nice to see David Dastmalchian, who I will continue to say would make a great Freddy Krueger if they ever get around to another A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET. In Rosario, Dastmalchian is simply playing another weirdo role, a character he could play with his eyes closed as this is basically the same weirdo he’s played in many other films. Emeraude Toubia is quite gorgeous, and the director knows it, by placing her in a skin tight top for the duration of the film. Toubia does a good job with the lead role, carrying the film despite its flawed story decisions. The script definitely isn’t her fault.

In the end, ROSARIO is bogged down with its wonky pacing, late in the game morality plays, and a few false endings. While the interior of grandma’s apartment is overwhelming, I think it is the strongest part of the movie. Still, nothing about ROSARIO stands out as something I haven’t seen before in better movies like THE OLD WAYS and especially, the excellent NO ONE GETS OUT ALIVE. I didn’t hate ROSARIO. I just think it’s familiar, flawed narratively, and paced weirdly.