Rosario Review

The decline of the movie star has been well-documented. For the uninitiated, the idea is that audiences historically showed up to a movie on the strength of its lead actors, but that’s not generally true anymore. Currently, the ones who can draw a crowd are mostly over forty, indicating that Hollywood hasn’t been minting new ones. Audiences display far more dedication to characters and franchises. They flock to theaters for “event films”, which often feature ensemble casts, hampering anyone’s ability to stand out. Which sounds fine, even good, until you consider their role in getting smaller films made, using their clout to find funding and distribution. As such, we’re fortunate they’re not completely gone yet, as demonstrated by Rosario receiving even its very limited theatrical run. Admittedly, David Dastmalchian is an unorthodox “star”, but the well-deserved fervor last year around Late Night with the Devil proves his draw amongst the horror crowd.

The movie centers around the titular “Rose” (Emeraude Toubia, in her feature film debut), a wealth manager in NYC. She learns that her abuela Griselda (Constanza Guitérrez) has passed away just as a snowstorm is bearing down on the city. Given the deceased’s immigration status, Rose and her father are concerned her body will disappear into the system if no one is there when the ambulance arrives. Rose makes the cross-borough trek to her apartment, all the while thinking about the strange incident at her First Communion that kept the two of them apart. So although we’ve no indication of the details, we’re prepared for shit to get weird when she arrives.

The core of Rosario is a fairly standard exploration of what it means to be a first-generation American immigrant, especially one whose family immigrated illegally. Its unique flare is that Griselda is a palera, a practitioner of the Afro-Cuban folk religion Palo Mayombe. Her apartment secrets her tools, from a tome of incantations to a hidden chamber full of skulls and cauldrons and pits. Director Felipe Vargas makes the reasonable assumption that most viewers are unfamiliar with the practice, so we’re thrown a few bones in the form of title cards and lots of Rose trying to understand.

However, that’s not really the movie’s concern. It wants you (and her) to learn just enough to make their presence uncomfortable. So instead of exposing audiences to an unfamiliar set of beliefs, it uses tired cinematic tropes to portray Palo as just another form of witchcraft. The apartment is full of candles. There are sigils all over the walls and books and Griselda’s body. The aforementioned tome is full of rhythmic incantations. Sure, I’m unaware of witchcraft involving quite so many bugs. But the idea of someone playing with forces they may or may not understand is the same. And now Rose has to deal with it.

Rosario is intended to be Toubia’s show. She’s alone in the apartment for vast swaths of the film, save for the occasional apparition or figure crawling around in the background. Which is one of the biggest problems; Toubia just doesn’t have enough juice to pull it off. She frequently seems lost, her deliveries landing flat and failing to engage us. Her occasional attempts to highlight the incongruity of a modern woman in a magical world are disastrous, such as unenthusiastically exclaiming “Nailed it” upon completing a spell meant to break a curse. She comes to life a bit more on the phone with her father (José Zúñiga), but every encounter with maintenance guy Marty (Paul Ben-Victor) is played with unprovoked hostility. Even worse are the handful of scenes she shares with Dastmalchian, who plays Joe, the next door neighbor determined to retrieve his air fryer. He’s so practiced at making an impression in a background role that he accidentally upstages her each time he shows up.

When an indie horror film with an unknown lead can’t lean on its performances, it has to rely on creative violence and exceptional effects. On this front, Rosario once again falls short. The effects are good enough, but nothing special, and clearly aided by so much of the story taking place in the shadows. But the attacks which Rose suffers at the hands of the spirits coming to collect on her grandmother’s deal are not particularly memorable or interesting. The one exception comes early on, when a worm-like creature pops out of Griselda’s nose, followed by a puddle of goo. The sequence which immediately follows is truly unsettling, as we watch it burrow into Rose’s palm and crawl up her arm under her skin, until she’s able to extract it through her ear with tweezers. After that, despite the infestation of bugs throughout the apartment, they’re horribly underutilized. Even the creature in the hidden Palo room isn’t of much consequence besides lurking in shots.

The story has some solid ideas, which ultimately turn on a few late-breaking reveals. They’re nothing earth-shattering, but they’re valuable to dispense in an indie horror film anyways. Frustratingly, they’re hiding behind an execution that is seriously lacking. Somewhere in Rosario is an interesting haunted house movie where we never leave the apartment, a dynamic experience of the complications at work within, and the many sacrifices that were necessary for Rose to be where she is today. But as delivered to us, it feels like a an unfinished script which knew what it wanted to say but was struggling to convey it effectively. There’s some talent here which was not fully realized, resulting in a movie you can easily afford to let pass you by.