"Could you do a spiritual cleansing on me?" "I can't help you." An official trailer is out for a Mexican indie horror film titled Disappear Completely, the latest film from filmmaker Luis Javier Henaine (of Happy Times and Ready to Mingle). It premiered in 2022 at Fantastic Fest as a work-in-progress, and screened at the Morelia Film Festival, and it won a Bronze Skull at the Morbido Film Festival in Mexico. There's still no US release date set, but with an opening in Mexico this March there's a trailer to check out. After visiting a brutal crime scene, an ambitious and insensitive tabloid crime photographer falls victim to a mysterious illness that makes him lose, one by one, his five senses. He attempts to figure out what is going on and how stop this illness "before the world he knows disappears completely..." Starring Harold Torres as Santiago, with Tete Espinoza, Fermín Martínez,...

Cannes frequently gets criticized for the paucity of Latin American representation in the main competition, so it was widely assumed that the new feature from festival veteran Amat Escalante, the 2013 best director winner for Heli, would be guaranteed a spot. Sad to report that watching Lost in the Night (Perdidos en la noche), it’s easy to see why it was shuffled off to a sidebar. The Mexican filmmaker moves out from the shadow of his former mentor, Carlos Reygadas, with his most accessible work to date in this revenge thriller, which is engrossing enough but also a bit meandering and underpowered.

Escalante’s fifth feature takes its cues more from his experience in television on Narcos: Mexico than from his previous big-screen work, which could in theory bring him to a wider audience. But it lacks the tight cohesion of that series at its best, and softens the jarring intensity,...