A Perfect Horror Thriller Just Dropped on Netflix with 100% Tomatometer

Summary

• The Netflix library has been updated with a new horror movie.
• It is a Mexican film that follows a photographer who loses his five senses.
• The movie boasts a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Netflix often treats its subscribers to great horror movies, both original and licensed. You can find classics like The Babadook and The Babysitter, many A24 horrors like Bodies Bodies Bodies, X and Pearl, as well as great foreign films, including many K-horrors like Train to Busan, #Alive and The Wailing. And now it's the turn of a new Mexican movie, which was already released in 2022, but only recently found a platform and landed on Netflix.

What if Nightcrawler with Jake Gyllenhaal had an unexpected twist on body horror with the psychology of Jacob's Ladder and the mysticism of John Carpenter's movies? Yes, that would have been the movie in question, because it is a wild cinematic experience, maybe not scary in some parts, but full of suspense and moral complexity. Many critics and viewers have praised it, and its score on Rotten Tomatoes is a perfect 100%. Without further ado, let's take a look at what this movie is and why it is so highly rated.

What Is the Movie About?

We're talking about the movie Desaparecer por Completo, which translates from Spanish as 'Disappear Completely'. As we mentioned, the movie was recently added to Netflix, but before that, it was virtually unknown to the general public for two years after premiering at Fantastic Fest in 2022.

It was directed by Mexican filmmaker Luis Javier Henaine, who co-wrote the script with Ricardo Aguado-Fentanes. The movie is full of homages to classic and contemporary films in the psychological thriller genre, as well as mystical and folk horror, but also offers a very unique concept that will leave viewers with goosebumps time and time again.

The story follows a photographer (Harold Torres) who works for a tabloid newspaper. He's used to sending photos from crime scenes, cynically observing the corpses and basically profiting from them. What the protagonist does not expect, however, is that during his work at one of the crime scenes, he will contract a mysterious 'disease', as a result of which, slowly but surely and without any possibility of recovery, each of his five senses will begin to disappear one by one. Of course, the case is not limited to some kind of conspiracy against the photojournalist - the story includes a full-fledged mystical folk horror, as the protagonist turns out to be cursed (here you can see parallels to Hideo Nakata's Ring, for example).

The movie has a rather pessimistic outlook, leaving no room for redemption or at least hope for a resolution of the situation. Instead, its cynicism leads to complete personality disintegration and destruction.

What Are Critics and Audiences Saying about It?

Unfortunately, considering that it was almost impossible to watch Disappear Completely online until now, there are not many reviews for the movie at the moment. However, those who managed to see it were absolutely delighted: the movie's score on Rotten Tomatoes was a perfect 100% from critics and 71% from audiences.

Viewers appreciated the level of cinematography of the film: the entire image is presented with an aspect ratio of 3:2, which makes the experience of the protagonist similar to the 'heroes' of his photos, providing the terrible tragedy of a person in the form of mere news articles. The viewer, along with the protagonist, seems to be losing their senses one by one and descending into endless darkness.

The depressing tone of the film, with no prospect of salvation (while the character desperately tries to grasp at a glimmer of hope throughout the film), is not to everyone's taste, but that's what makes the new film on Netflix so disturbing and horrifying.