User Reviews

Giving this an 6/10 rating

Revenge film set some where. An incident happens and blame is passed falsely which leads to tragedy, and a young woman sets off in search or answers and justice, in the very, very, very slow moving narrative which looks very beautiful, but really lacks movement and does not give you back enough in the time spent with it.

Yes, there is magic, but it's so subtle, you really don't notice it, that needed more flair, as the film needs more of this too. Well acted, great idea, looks and sounds fine, but not fine enough for the run time, that needed trimming,

Valentina Véliz Caileo is in very frame of this, and she is very good, watchable, and I just wish the film did a lot more, just was empty and really needed more to it. A shame, not rubbish, but not good enough.

A family of German settlers in Chile engage the services of the young "Rosa" (Valentina Véliz Caileo) to keep their home for them until one morning, they discover that all of their sheep have died. With a rope loosely tied about each one's neck, "Stefan" (Sebastian Hülk) immediately concludes that this is the work of the indigenous population and starts to take it out on the girl. Her father intervenes only for the farmer to set his dogs on the man. Now rather brutally orphaned, she leaves to seek justice from the mayor (Daniel Muñoz). He proves worse than useless, but the priest suggest she try to find a roof with "Mateo" (Daniel Antivilo). It turns out that he is a decent man, surviving on subsistence fishing and well versed in the more mystic arts of their traditions. "Rosa" wants to avenge her father's murder and now, more and more absorbed into the "Brujería", events in their small village causes consternation for her previous employers as their two sons go missing - just as two young, and fairly docile, cubs arrive! What now ensues sees the Christian community react with a combination of fear and militarism, but will that be sufficient to combat the power of the sorcery that is clearly at work demanding restoration of the equilibrium with both nature and amongst the divided and bigoted people. It's quite slowly paced, and it might have been filmed in the wettest place on the continent, but that works quite well to illustrate the timelessness of a way of life that thrived before the colonists arrived. The symbiotic relationship between people and nature and faith is quite potently, yet delicately, demonstrated by some charming acting and the design of the production looks good and earthy too. It's not your traditional style of horror film - indeed it doesn't really fit into that genre at all, but it's still quite an eerie and creepy exercise in leaving the forces of nature in peace and doing unto others...

This flick deserves all the love possible!

Just finished a book about the Brujos from Chiloé (La Hermandad de la Casa Grande, from Eduardo Pérez Arroyo), and came to this film looking for more. Instead, the film gave another point of view of the same historic event (The trials of the Brujos from Chiloé) , but radically different.

Don't come here looking for jump scares, or a traditional horror film about witchcraft. Instead, if you're willing to let the wonderful landscapes, and overall aura of Chiloé, and its cryptic folklore, overwhelm you, this is the right one.

Props for Valentina Véliz Caileo on hers very first role. She nails it.

«Brujería» is a welcome co-production between three countries that illustrates the multiple economic, legal, and cultural conflicts that arise when antagonistic positions, such as the European developmentalist and the Indo-American conservationist, collide. The first sequence establishes the central conflict: on Isla Grande de Chiloé (Chile), at the end of the 19th century, Rosa, a Huilliche girl, witnesses the murder of her father, Juan Raín, at the hands of a despotic German settler, blaming him of the death of his flock of sheep, which show evidence of the intervention of residents of the area, through a spell. That tension caused by outrage, between the arrogant colonial fundamentalism of Europeans as Stefan and the magical thinking of the original inhabitants of America, is the trigger for the entire story.

Rosa, who until then has served as a servant to the German family, leaves the farm and goes in search of justice to the nearest community. But the Chilean authority will not intervene: Juan Raín was murdered by the settler's dogs and the dogs are not accused, tried, or condemned. It is when the town priest directs Rosa to the house of Mateo, the leader of an organization of sorcerers called La Recta Provincia. A chain of dreams, rites, magical transmutations and crude reality then continues, which make up this fateful story that continues to this day, at the hands of the creole heirs of colonial rule.

Some reviews associate «Brujería» with «The VVitch: A New-England Folktale,» an unfortunate comparison that equates a story with strong ethnographic ties and marked by a libertarian ideology (co-written by the director and the poet, professor and political activist Pablo Paredes Muñoz, both Chilean), with an old-fashioned story of trickery, goats, inverted pentagrams and child-eating witches, lost on the road to Salem, which is nothing more than a fight between Caucasians. «Brujería» is closer, in my opinion, to Antonia Bird's film «Ravenous», the terrifying fable (written by Ted Griffith) that mixes myths and beliefs of the natives of North America with the concept of the "manifest destiny", which consequently cause a plague of cannibalism and vampirism.

In addition to the participation of Paredes Muñoz, the technical-artistic credits are evidence of the prestigious talent involved: produced by Pablo Larraín (the director of «Tony Manero,» «Post mortem» and «El club»), photographed by the award-winning María Secco (of «La jaula de oro», «Club sándwich» and «Te prometo anarquía») and the performance of poet, singer, educator and composer-folklorist Neddiel Muñoz Millalonco in the key role of the sorceress who guides Rosa through a beautiful initiation rite..

I think it is advisable to warn that the title may confuse us: it is not a film of horrors or shocks, although the magical element is handled with elegance, beautifully conceived by art director Bernardita Baeza, in environments where water predominates: sea, waterfalls , rain. Highly recommended.