It goes without saying that any horror movie stands a strong chance of being given a new lease of life in the run-up to Halloween, but you’d be hard-pressed to find many new additions to the genre more striking than In My Mother’s Skin.
Written and directed by Kenneth Dagatan, the Filipino hybrid of folk horror, supernatural shenanigans, and period-set family drama premiered this past January at the Sundance Film Festival, where it was the only non-English feature to screen as part of the “Midnight” selection. That was enough to convince Amazon that it was worth picking up, with the acclaimed terror debuting on Prime Video this past Thursday.
Buoyed by an 88 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, In My Mother’s Skin has turned critical acclaim into streaming success by debuting as one of the most-watched titles on its home platform just 24 hours after its arrival, per FlixPatrol. If you’re a dedicated horror enthusiast seeking out your next slice of spine-tingling terror that you haven’t seen before, then you won’t be able to do much better than this.
Unfolding at the tail end of World War II, a wealthy family end up trapped in their palatial mansion and terrorized by Japanese soliders. With the father fleeing to seek help from American forces to retrieve stolen gold, the mother’s health deteriorates. Naturally, this causes young daughter Tala to strike a deal with a deceitful flesh-eating fairy (as one does), which unsurprisingly has malevolent intentions.
Make no mistake, In My Mother’s Skin can often be a relentlessly bleak movie, but it’s one worth checking out nonetheless.