In the Mexican horror film "Huesera: The Bone Woman," no one ever mentions the name of the entity tormenting new mother Valeria (Natalia Solián). No one names the ritual she must perform to rid herself of it. There are rumors that such devices are dangerous and should only be used in extreme circumstances. Not all healers provide such services, and Val (as her friends refer to her) is ejected from one woman's shop for even mentioning it. While the women in Val's life are terrified of the "black magic" she seeks, they are also intimately familiar with it—aunt Val's has a scar from a similar trial following the birth of her first child.


This recognition of the dark side of motherhood is critical to director Michelle Garza Cervera's first feature, which won two major awards at the Tribeca Film Festival last summer. The canon of horror films by women directors exploring ambivalence towards—or outright hostility to—supposed what's to be a woman's ultimate fulfillment and purpose in life has grown exponentially since "The Babadook" premiered nearly a decade ago. "Huesera" is a pregnancy-as-body-horror film with a haunted-house element in which Val is plagued by a demonic spirit who announces its presence with the cracking and snapping of bones.


"Huesera" does not reinvent either of those subgenres. But it does so in such an artfully crafted vessel, full of details that bring the characters and their relationships to life, that it achieves a lofty goal for genre cinema: turning a familiar formula into a personal statement. Cervera has a particularly strong grasp on millennial color palettes, which manifest themselves in eye-soothing pink and green combinations. This film contains no throwaway shots: even establishing shots and dialogue scenes are artfully composed and beautifully lit. The score and sound design stand out for their prickly, needling ability to spike a viewer's cortisol levels on demand, making the Spanish-language punk tracks that pepper the film seem soothing in comparison.


The most compelling aspect, however, is Cervera and her co-writers' portrayal of Val, a woman caught between what she truly desires, what she believes she should desire, and what society desires for her. Val wants a child more than anything else in the world at the start of the film, so much so that she is willing to give up her job as a furniture maker to pursue her dream. When she and her bourgeois husband Ral (Alfonso Dosal) become pregnant, Val becomes irritated with the paternalism with which her husband, family, and doctor treat her now that she has a fetus (she won't call it a baby until it's born) inside of her.


Val, you see, is a rebel with an anti-authoritarian punk rock background and an ex-girlfriend named Octavia (Mayra Batalla) who offers a tempting alternative to Val's domesticated new life. (In a flashback scene, a teenage Val and her friends run from the cops, screaming, "I don't like domestication!"—if only she could see herself now.) Val is clearly bothered by the fact that she is now a "Mama" first and a person second. She isn't naturally drawn to motherhood, and her family's teasing about the time she dropped a neighbor boy while babysitting exacerbates her sense that something is broken within her. It's difficult to say which comes first, Val's anxiety about her life choices or the terrifying visions of death and injury, but they definitely rise in tandem.


This theme is combined with a body-horror approach to the physical changes that occur during pregnancy, as well as a possession/exorcism narrative that turns postpartum psychosis into a monster. All of these elements are required for the film to be successful: None of them are strong enough to carry "Huesera" alone, and the story's momentum begins to wane once all the relevant puzzle pieces are in place. Cervera, thankfully, brings "Huesera" back around with a stunning, hallucinatory sequence near the end of the film, featuring a corps of "Ballerinas Huesero" whose limbs bend at terrifying, unnatural angles.


"Huesero" means "bonesetter" in Spanish, and refers to a type of folk healer who specializes in mending and setting broken bones. If you find bones sticking out of flesh upsetting, this film may make you woozy—but the title suggests that maybe Val has to be broken before she can be put back together again. The film ends with a provocative twist on the premise that should not be spoiled here, but it reinforces Cervera's bold, unapologetic point of view. The only way out is sometimes through.