So I borrowed the VHS for a very long time and never gave it back. Let’s make something clear, Mexicans, we don’t steal. I know that your love for horror films goes back to sneaking a VHS of Child’s Play from Blockbuster… This interview has been edited for length and clarity. We sat down with “La Muñeca del Terror” to discuss the film, her influences, and the power of Latinas in horror. Last week, Guerrero’s feature-length commentary on gentrification and ode to viejito power, “ Bingo Hell,” premiered on Amazon Video. It is no surprise that her unapologetic dedication to narratively rich storytelling has attracted her to the likes of horror giants at Blumhouse Productions. Guerrero has gained recognition for her work directing television episodes of “ The Purge” (2019), “ La Quinceañera,” and “ Into the Dark: Culture Shock,” the latter of which depicted a portrayal of the border crisis. Guerrero has spent her career chasing that feeling as a horror film director, subverting the genre known for scream queens and infusing an acute sense of culture and social commentary. “I had no idea a horror movie can follow you home.” “It’s not that I got scared at a young age watching that, I just didn’t understand what scared felt like,” Guerrero tells Latina. She noticed right away that Guerrero was suddenly scared of the dark and that something was looming on her mind, like a psychological apparition. Her mom quickly found the VHS shoved haphazardly between Guerrero’s stuffed animals. Once Guerrero watched “Child’s Play 2,” she got a taste of the unnerving sensation being scared can cause-paranoia, anxiety, and an irrational yet unsettling feeling that the “bad guy” is near. If death was so readily present around her, like the dead people she saw on front-cover newspapers riddled on street corners, then why was it so prohibited? Something about corporeal transformation fascinated the young Guerrero, eliciting in her a sensation she longed to understand. Secretly, the filmmaker would also watch televised plastic surgeries. Every day after school, she would watch family-friendly cartoons and slapstick sitcoms like El Chavo del Ocho. But Guerrero was not a stranger to horror. After all, she was not allowed to watch scary movies. Chucky, the demonic doll, glared menacingly on the cover. When Mexican-Canadian filmmaker Gigi Saul Guerrero was just seven years old, she visited a Blockbuster in Mexico City and discretely plucked a “Child’s Play 2” VHS off the shelf, careful not to let her mom see.
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