Constanza Gutierrez, David Dastmalchian, Diana Lein, Emeraude Toubia, Emilia Faucher, Felipe Vargas, horror, Jose Zuniga, movies, Paul Ben-Victor, reviews, Rosario
May 13, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Felipe Vargas
Some language in Spanish with subtitles
Culture Representation: Taking place in New York City, in 2024 and briefly in 1999, the horror film “Rosario” features a predominantly Latin cast of characters (with some white people) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.
Culture Clash: When a stockbroker keeps vigil over her grandmother’s corpse during a blizzard that has delayed ambulance services, many bizarre and supernatural things happen.
Culture Audience: “Rosario” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of horror movies about ghosts, but the movie has a muddled plot with uninteresting and shallow characters.
The disappointing horror film “Rosario” is a collection of repetitive jump scares padding out an underdeveloped story about a woman watching over her grandmother’s corpse. The movie uses immigration issues and generational trauma as manipulative gimmicks. It’s the worst type of horror movie because it’s boring and nonsensical when it didn’t need to be.
Directed by Felipe Vargas and written by Alan Trezza, “Rosario” is the feature-film directorial debut for Vargas. “Rosario” might have been better as a short film because there isn’t enough in the weak plot to justify the movie’s 88-minute runtime. But even as a short film, the characters would have to better-written because the ones in this movie are about as interesting as an empty coffin. Most of the movie’s acting performances are mediocre or substandard.
“Rosario” (which takes place in New York City) has a introduction revealing that Palo is a religion that is a cross between African traditions and Latin American Catholicism. The introduction says: “The path of Palo is one of sacrifice. As with all religions, in Palo exists light and darkness.” Practitioners of Palo are called Paleros, who do animal sacrifices.
The movie then shows a scene taking place in 1999, in New York City’s Brooklyn borough. (“Rosario” was actually filmed in New York City and Los Angeles.) A Catholic family is gathered for a party to celebrate the first communion of Rosario Fuentes (played by Emilia Faucher), who’s about 7 or 8 years old. Rosario’s father Oscar Fuentes (played by José Zúñiga) tells her that he and Rosario’s mother Elena (played by Diana Lein) will find a way to make Rosario’s dreams come true.
Many of the people in the family are immigrants from Colombia, including Oscar’s mother Griselda (played by Constanza Gutierrez), who seems to keep herself at a distance from the rest of the family during this party. Rosario wanders off into a room, where she notices that in a closet, there’s a torn dress with blood on it. Griselda startles Rosario (in one of many excessive jump scares) by suddenly appearing in the room. Griselda’s left hand is bleeding, but she doesn’t want to get bandage up the hand. Rosario asks Griselda to join the rest of the group for the prayer before they have their meal.
Griselda says no and replies ominously, “My beliefs are not yours.” But when it comes time for the group prayer, Griselda show up and joins the group. She looks like she’s in a trance. All of that sounds intriguing, but the movie then makes the mistake of abruptly fast-forwarding 25 years later and not adequately filling in large gaps of the story that needed to be filled.
In 2024, Rosario (played by Emeraude Toubia) is a stockbroker at prestigious firm in New York City’s Manhattan borough, where she seems to be the only Latina stockbroker. She now wants to be called Rose, which is the movie’s way of saying that she’s trying to downplay her Latin heritage and make her name sound more Anglo. Rosario is a bachelorette who lives alone and has no children.
Throughout the disjointed story, there are some bits and pieces of information that come out about what happened in the 25 years since Rosario’s first communion party: Her parents had a bitter divorce. Rosario took her mother Elena’s side in the divorce, which caused Rosario to be estranged from Oscar and Griselda. Elena died of a terminal illness a few years ago.
One day, Rosario gets a phone call from Griselda but decides not to answer the phone. Not long after that, a blizzard shuts down the New York City metropolitan area. Major tunnels going in an out of the city are blocked because of the blizzard.
Rosario gets another phone call. This time, it’s from the superintendent from the apartment where Griselda lives. He tells her that Griselda has died, and they need one of her family members to be there. Rosario explains that she hasn’t been in contact with Griselda for a long time, but the superintendent says that Rosario’s name and phone number were listed as the emergency contact for Griselda.
Rosario calls her father to tell him what happened. Oscar lives in New Jersey, and because of the blizzard, it will take him hours to be able to go to New York City. Rosario is much closer to the apartment building and doesn’t need to use a bridge or tunnel get there. And so, Rosario relucantly offers to be the relative to make the ambulance arrangements. Oscar says he’ll meet up with Rosario at the apartment as soon as he can.
When Rosario gets to the apartment, it’s predictably dark and creepy. Marty the superintendent (played by Paul Ben-Victor) is creepy too. And so is an annoying apartment building resident named Joe (played David Dastmalchian), who is obsessed with getting an air fryer returned to him that Griselda had borrowed.
Because of the blizzard, Rosario finds out that the ambulance services in the city are overworked and will be delayed for several hours because her situation is not considered to be a major emergency. And so, most of the movie is about Rosario being stuck in the apartment with Griselda’s corpse and finding out some of Griselda’s secrets that should come as no surprise because the movie ruined any suspense or mystery by revealing the Palo angle at the very beginning.
Rosario experiences many hallucinations, including seeing her terminally ill mother in a hospital gown and IV drip. Rosario sees certain insects crawl out of certain areas of her body and out of Griselda’s corpse. Rosario talks out loud to herself, which is why it’s revealed that she feels guilty for ignoring Griselda’s calls for the last few months of Griselda’s life.
The visual effects and makeup for the horror scenes are fairly effective for this low-budget movie. But these visuals don’t mean much when the story just continues on a repeat loop of Rosario being startled by things she sees or hears in the apartment. Even though she is the story’s main character, Rosario’s personality is almost as dead as her grandmother’s.
A common question that comes up viewers’ minds when watching a “haunted residence” movie is: Why don’t the person or people who are being haunted just leave? Rosario does try to leave. She gets as far as a few blocks away but then she changes her mind because the blizzard is too intense. We’re supposed to believe that Rosario can’t find any taxi services and car services to pick her up.
Why not just leave the apartment and arrange for Griselda’s body be picked up after the blizzard has ended? This terrible movie doesn’t want Rosario or viewers to have that common sense, because then the entire flimsy story would fall apart. The answer to the mystery is so obvious, you don’t even have to wait for the scene where Rosario finds that Griselda kept one of Rosario’s used tampons in a pot to figure out what’s going on here.
Some horror movies that bad at least make an effort to keep the suspense going. Any suspense that “Rosario” could’ve had fizzles out about halfway through the movie when it looks like the filmmakers ran out of ideas on how Rosario would spend her time in the apartment. The pile-on of cheap scares are more “gross-out” than truly terrifying. “Rosario” has plenty of illusions, but the biggest illusion of all is pretending to be a worthwhile horror movie.
Mucho Mas Media released “Rosario” in select U.S. cinemas on May 2, 2025.