A Hidden Gem Just Hit Netflix – And It's One of the Best Horror Films of the Last 5 Years

Summary

• There's a new Mexican horror movie on Netflix.
• It's a terrifying story about a cursed journalist.
• The movie has a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Imagine this scenario. What if Nightcrawler presented the ideas of unethical journalism not in a thriller setting, but through horror tropes? What if Jake Gyllenhaal 's stringer had found himself in a creepy situation that involved not insane crimes, but incomprehensible horror coursing through his entire body? What if the movie had taken a much darker mystical body horror turn, combining the creepy psychology of Jacob's Ladder with the mysticism of John Carpenter's films?

Well, the result would have been one of the scariest movies ever made in the history of the horror genre. And in fact, such a movie has recently been produced: not long ago, the Netflix library was enriched with a Mexican horror thriller that provides one of the wildest cinematic experiences, playing the moral underpinnings of unscrupulous journalism as effectively as Nightcrawler.

The movie has a perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and it's one of the most undeservedly underrated movies to ever come out on Netflix. Let's take a look at what this movie is all about and why it's so well received.

A Creepy Mexican Horror Thriller

The movie in question is called Disappear Completely, or Desaparecer Por Completo in Spanish. Before the new horror landed on Netflix, it premiered at Fantastic Fest in 2022, and without initially getting a distributor outside of Mexico, it went unnoticed. And that's a huge oversight for anyone who appreciates quality horror stories!

The movie was helmed by Mexican filmmaker Luis Javier Henaine, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes. The story is full of tributes to both classic and contemporary psychological thrillers, as well as supernatural and folk horrors, but it also features a highly original formula that will give audiences goosebumps over and over again.

It tells the story of photojournalist Santiago, played brilliantly by Harold Torres, who covers crime scenes for a tabloid newspaper. He is used to taking pictures of the victims and cynically profiting from them.

What the main character never expects, though, is that during his assignment at one of the sites, he becomes infected with a strange 'disease' that causes all of his five senses to gradually vanish, one by one, without any chance of recuperation.

Naturally, the plot is not confined to any kind of conspiracy targeting the journalist — the story involves a full-blown folk horror mysticism, as it turns out that the protagonist is cursed.

Audience and Critical Response

Unfortunately, there aren't many reviews on aggregators at the moment, as Disappear Completely has only recently become widely available. Those who did get to watch the movie were completely blown away: the film's aggregate score on Rotten Tomatoes is a perfect 100% from critics and 71% from audiences.

The audience praised the smart approach to the cinematography: the entire picture is displayed with a 3:2 aspect ratio, making the protagonist's experience resemble that of his photographs, providing the tragedy of a human being in the shape of a regular news article.

The film presents a rather dark perspective with no hope of redemption, and Santiago, gradually deprived of smell, taste, hearing, sight and sensation, desperately attempts to crawl out, holding out hope to the very end for a miraculous rescue or redemption.

But alas, no helping hand comes, and as a result, his own cynicism and belittling of the sufferings of others leads to his own personal tragedy. And that's what's so disturbing and terrifying about the new movie on Netflix, making Disappear Completely one of the highest-quality horror films in the streaming service's history.