Huesera: The Bone Woman

Cast View all

	Natalia Solián	Valeria
	Alfonso Dosal	Raúl
	Mayra Batalla	Octavia
	Mercedes Hernández	Isabel
	Sonia Couoh	Vero
	Aida López	Maricarmen
	Anahí Allué	Norma
	Martha Claudia Moreno	Ursula
	Emilram Cossío	Gynecologist
	Norma Reyna	Sabine Woman
	Gina Morett	Sabine Woman
	Rocío Belmont	Sabine Woman
	Camila Leoneé	Paola
	Luciano Martí	Jorge
	Enoc Leaño	Luis
	Laura de Ita	Marina
	Carlos Orozco	Victor
	Gabriela Velarde	Valeria in Flashback
	Isabel Luna	Octavia in Flashback
	Luisa Almaguer	Edna
	Nadia Cuevas	Laboratory Receptionist
	Juliana Pérez Guerrero	Laboratory Girl
	Isabel Prudencio	Sabine Girl
	Amanda Piedra	Baby Natalia
	Carla Segovia	Huesera Dancer

Crew View all

Director	Michelle Garza
Writer	Michelle Garza, Abia Castillo
Producer	David Bond, Edher Campos, Roberto Carrera, Michelle Garza, Omar Lara, Eduardo Lecuona, Javier Sepulveda, Øyvind Stiauren, Francisco Sánchez Solís, Lorena Ugarteche, Paulina I. Villavicencio, Joakim Ziegler
Photography	Nur Rubio Sherwell

Trailer

Edition details

Personal

Notes

My quick rating - 5.2/10. Huesera: The Bone Woman starts with a genuinely intriguing idea: motherhood wrapped in dark folklore, with sinister forces creeping at the edges. Unfortunately, the final product is more about uncomfortable self-discovery than it is about actual horror, leaving me just asking, “Is that it?”

Natalia Solián plays Valeria, a woman who’s either haunted by a supernatural curse or just severely regretting her life choices. Hard to tell, given she wears the same wide-eyed, slightly stunned expression through most of the film, like she’s constantly experiencing the world for the very first time. Still, to her credit, that performance is oddly magnetic and becomes the glue holding this uneven story together.

Director Michelle Garza Cervera (tackling her first full-length feature) gives us a slick-looking film. You can feel personal touches woven into the myth of La Loba—the bone-gathering woman who sings wolves back to life—using it as a metaphor for Valeria figuring out if motherhood is her true path, or if she’s meant to break free and run wild toward her own horizon. It’s an interesting concept. The problem is that the concept never quite solidifies.

Editing is one of the big culprits here. Scenes jump awkwardly—like Valeria nodding off on a couch with her mom, only to suddenly be rocking out at a punk concert confronting her sometimes-lover Octavia (Mayra Batalla), then bam! straight to giving birth. It plays like a dream sequence you’re waiting to snap out of. Spoiler: it’s not a dream, just an odd editorial choice that leaves you checking if you accidentally sat on your remote and skipped chapters.

Pacing is where Huesera really stumbles. For a movie marketed with creepy contortions and haunting silhouettes, it’s strangely devoid of fear. Moments that should boil over with supernatural terror fizzle into quiet contemplation. The horror elements drop off, replaced by a slow-burning story about accepting who you are—interesting, sure, but a total bait-and-switch if you showed up for the promised curse-driven nightmare.

Add to that a script peppered with narrative gaps, and you’re left scratching your head. Events occur without enough explanation, feeling like scenes were carved out in post-production that might’ve answered key questions. The end result is a story that feels incomplete, leaving the folklore framework underused and the emotional payoff muted.

After watching, I found myself googling the legend behind it—discovering the old Mexican tale of the desert woman who gathers bones and sings them into living wolves, which then transform into free women. That’s undeniably rich territory for a horror-fable hybrid. It’s just too bad the film mostly treads water instead of running wild with its own mythos.

That said, Cervera clearly has an eye for evocative visuals and a personal angle that makes parts of Huesera compelling, even if the whole never quite comes together. I suspect bigger, more polished projects are on her horizon.

For now, though? Not a horror film so much as a moody meditation on motherhood and identity, dressed up with occasional skeletal cracking. If you came for the nightmares, don’t be surprised when you find yourself watching more of a soft psychological drama that just happens to have some creepy hands.

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