Tigers Are Not Afraid Review (Film, 2019)

content warning: gun violence, gore, violence against women, violence against children

Tigers Are Not Afraid (original title Vuelven, or Come Back) is a dark fantasy/horror film about children trying to survive the Mexican Drug War. A cartel is kidnapping or killing all the adults in the neighborhood. Estrella survives a shooting outside of her school, where her teacher gives her three wishes, represented by three pieces of chalk. Her first wish allows her to bring back the spirit of her taken mother before she joins a group of orphaned children to help her survive.

Writer/director Issa López crafts a terrifying and heartbreaking story inspired by an actual crisis in Mexico. The minor elements of magical realism in the story—the chalk wishes, graffiti that comes alive as children tell each other fairy tales—represent the lost innocence of the children forced to fight for their lives against cartel violence.

Estrella’s understanding of the world is colored by the fantastic. A small string of blood guides her eye to the dangers that she faces. An ornate gun turns into a snake that attacks one of the local gang leaders. The whisper of her mother offers her advice, but that advice is tied to the ever-rotting vision of her mother’s corpse in a plastic bag. Every wish she makes brings her closer to survival, but every wish has unexpected consequences that haunt her further.

In the opening school scene, Estrella’s class is told to write a fairy tale featuring princes, warriors, and tigers. These are the terms used to define the world of Tigers Are Not Afraid. Estrella’s story says that a prince cannot become a tiger because he has forgotten how to be a prince, a functioning and productive member of society, in the wake of chaos surrounding him. She runs off to join the other orphaned children who call themselves tigers, hunting as a pack to steal food and other supplies to keep them alive. Estrella earns the right to lead the Tigers, but she can never quite shake off her sense of responsibility to keep everyone safe at any cost.

Tigers Are Not Afraid cannot be analyzed without engaging with the reality of the violence happening in the real world of the story. This is a political text about children coping with unimaginable pain, loss, and suffering. It is the substance of the film. Their families, their homes, their schools, and their ability to grow up safely have been taken by rampant crime driven by drug trafficking. The system that should be able to protect these children has failed.

The horror of this film is layered in ways most horror films never even try to engage with. The threats Estrella and the Tigers face are based in reality. Their story is fiction, but the source of the story is the actual violence brought on by the illegal drug trade. The supernatural and fantasy elements exist to provide a break from reality. It’s a delicate balancing act that López wields with great precision. The result is a horror film you won’t easily be able to shake off.

Tigers Are Not Afraid is streaming on Shudder.

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