Tekenchu
2020 · 9m · México
Directed by Carlos Matienzo Serment
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Rafael, a seriously injured man, falls into the darkness of the Tlalpujahua forest, where he is found by Teresa and her sister Dolores, who take care of him — until they discover his dark past and return him to the forest, now at the mercy of Tekenchu.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's competent—wounded man, forest, betrayal, mythic vengeance entity—but Tekenchu feels like it's checking boxes from the folklore-thriller playbook rather than exploding them; the premise has teeth until it doesn't, collapsing into a pretty conventional morality play.
Serment constructs a deliberate visual grammar here, letting the forest and its mythological weight do the narrative work; the formal restraint in how he reveals Rafael's past and the sisters' moral reckoning shows a filmmaker thinking carefully about pacing, space, and the weight of folk tradition.
The decision to keep Tekenchu mostly unseen—letting dread live in sound design and the sisters' reaction rather than revelation—is what elevates this from regional thriller into something that breathes; one choice about what not to show makes the whole premise bite.