Dulce Susto
2020 · 11m · México
Directed by Esbeín Liévano
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, horror
Tones: darkly comic, tense, whimsical
It is Halloween night; Mauricio is a boy who, because of a cold, has stayed home alone; the children of his neighbourhood ring the bell to ask for their sweets and he always drives them away by scaring them with a mask, but for his bad luck, a mysterious girl appears at his door and will not leave him alone until she gets the sweets she wants so much.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A Halloween siege film where the monster is a relentless girl demanding candy—it's a premise that could be twee garbage in anyone else's hands, but Liévano leans into the genuine menace and absurdist logic until you can't tell if you're watching horror or a fever dream about entitlement. This is the kind of tonal tightrope walk that makes most people uncomfortable, which is exactly why it works.
The film demonstrates rigorous control over its escalating tension and visual grammar, building from domestic comedy into something genuinely uncanny; the mise-en-scène choices—the mask, the threshold, the accumulating persistence—recall a lineage of Latin American magical realism grounded in real dread.
The decision to keep the girl's motivations and nature ambiguous, refusing both full explanation and supernatural spectacle, lets the 11 minutes breathe with genuine unease—it's a restraint choice that transforms what could be a gimmick into something that actually haunts you.