YOU ARE NOT ME (aka TU NO ERES YO, 2023)

New streaming on Shudder from Doppelganger Pictures!
Directed/Written by Marisa Crespo, Moisés Romera.
Check out the trailer here!!

Aitlana (Roser Tapias) and her wife Gabi (Yapoena Silva) and their newly adopted son return the home of Aitlana’s parents for Christmas a day earlier than expected. They find their parents less than thrilled to see them and a woman named Nadia (Anna Kurikka) is living in her room and her parents are treating Nadia like their own daughter. Aitlana questions her parents, but they are distracted by a group of strangers arriving for a dinner party. As the night goes on, the intentions of this group become clearer and much more insidious, putting Aitlana in the middle of it all.

YOU ARE NOT ME is one of those films like DIE HARD that happens on Christmas but doesn’t necessarily have a lot to do with the holiday season. Sure, the couple with their baby in tow show up on Christmas Eve and every now and then they’ll play a Christmas carol, but for the most part, YOU ARE NOT ME is a folk horror/drama about never being able to really being able to return home. Some kind of drama occurred at home and Aitlana decided not to come back for her wedding and instead, marry Gabi away from home. Aitlana believes that because of this decision, that is the reason she has seemingly been replaced by Nadia. Still, none of it makes sense to her as her parents simply are not acting right. It’s a conflict that hits Aitlana hard, yet we aren’t given the whole story until the tragic climax of the film.

The journey to this climax is what is going to draw in or detract viewers. There is a whole lot of buildup to the explosive climax. Reminiscent of films like THE WICKER MAN and other folk horror films, YOU ARE NOT ME is a story about an outsider witnessing a dark and forbidden culture for the first time. Because I knew this was a horror film, I was patient and found the ending to be worth the wait, but your milage may vary.

Of course, when you see a bunch of old people gathering for some kind of ritual, the one thing you can count on is that there will be a point where those old people are going to strip down and bare all. What is it about folk horror and naked old people? It seems any kind of elderly gathering in horror eventually turns into a septuagenarian orgy. Well, it happens here too.

While the ending of YOU ARE NOT ME turned out to be pretty potent and emotionally devastating, it also isn’t anything we haven’t seen before in other folk horrors. There’s a melancholy feel to the very end that resonates all the way through the credits. And while there are a lot of familiar tropes going on with YOU ARE NOT ME, it ended up standing out due to some solid performances by the leads and its dedication to making the dramatic lead-in a powerful one.