Intensity: 🩸🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Luis Javier Henaine
At first, Disappear Completely (2022) — also known as Desaparecer Por Completo — plays like a run-of-the-mill creepy little curse story. And for a little while, that’s exactly what it is. But stick around: sharp writing and a handful of well-executed filmmaking tricks turn this Mexican horror slow burn into one of the most viscerally upsetting experiences you’ll sit through all year.
Disappear Completely: The Players
- Harold Torres [Silent Night (2023)]: Santiago Mendoza, tabloid photographer who makes his living snapping front-page shots of the freshly dead. People skills not included.
- Tete Espinoza [Where the Tracks End (2023)]: Marcela Colorado Luna, nurse and impossibly understanding girlfriend who deserves a whole lot better than Santiago.
- Norma Reyna [Huesera (2022)]: Leonor Romero, the mystical old woman, spiritual guide, and resident curse expert. When she talks, you’d be wise to listen.
Disappear Completely: The Breakdown
Synopsis
Santiago Mendoza has a job most people couldn’t stomach: he photographs the dead for the front page of a sleazy tabloid. Murder victims, accident victims, whatever unfortunate soul his buddies on the police force tip him off about. The grislier the scene and the bigger the name, the better the payday.
Business is good. The morbid front pages sell papers, Santiago gets his cut, and life rolls on. Until the night he photographs the wrong corpse.
From there, Disappear Completely (2022) tightens the screws. Santiago begins losing himself, bit by bit, and the clock starts ticking on figuring out who cursed him — and why — before there’s nothing left of him to save.
Production
Because Santiago does most of his work after dark, Disappear Completely (2022) lives in a permanent moody half-light. Cinematographer Glauco Bermudez soaks the frame in the neon and grime of the big city, then drags us into a dark forgotten warehouse where a body turns up — every shot feeding the morbid, exploitative world of those “blood portraits” splashed across a less-than-reputable tabloid’s front page. The film wears its sleaze well.
Lighting, in fact, does a lot of the heavy lifting. Bermudez will light an entire scene with nothing but a flashlight beam, or the stuttering pop of Santiago’s camera flash. It shouldn’t work as well as it does. There’s real artistry in the macabre.
What’s more, as the curse digs in, the filmmakers get downright sadistic — in the best possible way. You’re not simply watching Santiago succumb to the curse; you’re feeling it right there alongside him. Sound designer José Miguel Enríquez earns a big chunk of the credit, building a soundscape that keeps the whole ordeal feeling uncomfortably, intimately real. This is visceral filmmaking in the truest sense — the kind that reaches past your eyeballs and lodges somewhere in your gut.
And it’s not just hype: Disappear Completely (2022) racked up eight nominations at the Ariels — Mexico’s equivalent of the Oscars — and won two of them. The trophies went to its effects work, with Bermudez’s cinematography and Enríquez’s sound design each landing nods of their own. Recognition well earned.
Cast and Story
Let’s be upfront: the bones of this story are familiar. Man does something he shouldn’t. Man gets cursed. Man races to undo it before the curse finishes the job. But here’s the thing about Mexican horror and curses — it never pulls its punches. Disappear Completely (2022) keeps things simple, brutal, and entirely believable, and that’s exactly why it lands.
What gives the film its weight, though, are the small, achingly human subplots threaded around the dread. Santiago and Marcela’s relationship. The career ambitions, the half-built dreams, the ordinary life slowly coming apart. That’s the canvas all the supernatural cruelty gets painted on, and it makes every loss hurt more than it has any right to.
With such a small cast, the movie spends most of its runtime locked in close with Santiago — and Harold Torres carries that burden beautifully. His take on a man watching his own body and life dissolve is realistic and heartbreaking. Tete Espinoza plays off him with ease, bringing a warmth to Marcela that Torres’s character is, understandably, fresh out of. And then Norma Reyna arrives, veteran of Mexican cinema that she is, and brings with her an air of total certainty. Truth. When Leonor speaks, the film stops second-guessing itself.
Summary
Disappear Completely (2022) isn’t flashy. No explosions, no car chases, no gunfights — just one man coming face-to-face with a seemingly unrelenting force and the devastation it leaves behind. My advice? Go in knowing as little as possible and let it all unfold right alongside Santiago. Quick warning before you do: the film carries a trigger warning for animal harm. After premiering at Fantastic Fest, Disappear Completely landed on Netflix, where it’s streaming now — and it’s absolutely worth your time.
Review by Robert Zilbauer.