Mesmerizing, mysterious, willfully perverse, the Mexican movie Post Tenebras Lux (2012) opens with two scenes, one realistic, the other fantastical. In the first a toddler roams across a muddy country field at dusk as thunder booms and dogs chase cows, horses and donkeys.
It’s a cacophonous, stunning sequence. The edges of the images are softly blurred, the light is magical — although it isn’t remotely clear what that girl and those animals have to do with the following scene of a red, radiant devil with horns, hooves, swishing tail and a literal toolbox entering a house at night, like a handyman from Hades on an emergency call. It’s no wonder that a young boy in the house who sees this bizarre apparition stops cold to gawk. [Read more…]