My Thoughts On Rosario
Set between 1999 and the present day, Rosario is a moody, uneven horror debut, that begins with Rosario's 13th birthday, where the celebration masks the tensions and grief lurking within her immigrant household, where her mother is terminally ill, her father is emotionally distant and burdened, and her grandmother Griselda exhibits strange and unsettling behavior.
Years later, Rosario (now played by Emeraude Toubia) is a stockbroker in New York City, emotionally disconnected from her roots, when a call from a building superintendent (Paul Ben-Victor) informs her that Griselda has died, and Rosario reluctantly returns to the dark, cluttered apartment of her youth to wait for emergency services, just as a blizzard begins to trap her inside.
As the power fails Rosario begins to uncover family secrets, some supernatural, others all too human, that force her to reckon with her past, with the film using familiar horror tropes you have seen many times before.
I am sure a lot of people would have been drawn to the film for the excellent David Dastmalchian (Late Night With The Devil), but unfortunately, in Rosario his role is limited to a quirky subplot, which, while lightly symbolic, feels like a big missed opportunity.
The performance of Emeraude Toubia gets a negative from me, too, as it's quite rocky, and lacks the energy and focus for you to really care too much, and comes across as quite cumbersome, and I would have definitely have liked to have seen some more character development involved, too.
The pacing too, is very uneven, and while the film starts quite good, once the supernatural elements kick in, the story begins to meander, and the film relies far too much on familiar genre tropes, and it just plays it all a bit too safe, and at times, feels quite lazy.
And while the final act tries to make up for the lack of depth in earlier scenes by exploring the family's immigrant journey and the sacrifices they made, it comes in too late to have the emotional weight it should, as by the time the film gets to this point, it feels like an afterthought, a last minute attempt to give some meaning to the events we’ve already witnessed, which just adds to the disjointed and incomplete narrative aspects of the film.
With that said, I did enjoy some of the atmosphere in the film, and from the moment we step into Rosario’s grandmother’s house during the flashback, the mood is heavy and unsettling, with some good camera and lighting work at play, and the attention to detail in the set design makes the space feel quite haunting and personal.
Rosario is a film with a seen it all before vibe though, and doesn't really offer enough, as it's all pretty standard stuff. While it's a film with a lot of heart, and a lot to say, the pacing and narrative coherence really lets it down.
It's a hard film to recommend if you're familiar with these type of films, and I wouldn't say it's a really bad film, it's watchable, but is just doesn't offer enough to stand out to warrant anything more than a cheap/free stream recommendation.
I can see what director Felipe Vargas and writer Alan Trezza were aiming for, and I genuinely think they have the potential to make something truly unique if they push their vision further in the future.