True Detective: Night Country’s breakthrough horror film will ruin you

Before she made the icy horror of True Detective: Nightland, showrunner Issa López made an impression with a gripping horror fable about children facing human traffickers. Released in 2017, Tigers are not afraid would become the writer-director’s calling card, a bleak horror fantasy that confirmed López’s talent for atmosphere and revealing characters through the things they fear. It broke my damn heart too.

Located in an unnamed Mexican city, Tigers are not afraid follows Estrella (Paola Lara), a young girl we meet in a moment of terrible violence. As her teacher tells the class about fairy tales, gunfire erupts outside, and in an attempt to comfort Estrella, her teacher offers her three crayons, saying they are three wishes. Throughout the film’s 83 minutes, Estrella will use these three wishes, to terrible effect. Shortly after receiving them, she was orphaned and her mother was allegedly kidnapped by the human trafficking gang known as The Huascas. What choice does she have?

Tigers are not afraid is a ruthless film. It’s about children struggling with terrible things that have happened to them and will happen to them, things that they don’t fully understand yet, but that they still have to accept and struggle through. As Estrella comes into contact with a group of orphans similarly victimized by The Huascas (and the politician who secretly supports them), she considers how to use her survival desires and recoils from the unintended consequences that its use entails – as Estrella’s mother haunts her like a ghost after wishing she would return. By means of, Tigers are not afraid injects its gritty crime tragedy with a touch of fairytale magic; sometimes to underline the innocence of the orphan gang, and sometimes to give a glimpse of the supernatural world in which Estrella believes she is being chased.

Children, as the film’s sometimes messy but effective script underlines again and again, have a sense of clarity that the world makes them pay for. Estrella and her new friends know the score, know the Huascas and what they do, and know how bad it is when they come across a phone with evidence that the group is led by a corrupt politician. Evil and its works are not lost to them. Yet Tigers are not afraid still let them stop and be children – they laugh at each other, play football, organize talent shows, watch violent movies – everything they struggle through is a distraction from the kid things they really want to do. (This also gives the film some much-needed moments of levity, as the cast of child actors López has assembled terribly funny.)

It’s entirely possible that this all sounds like a terrible time, something that requires a healthy amount of resources to stream on an evening after work. Consider moving past that. The movie is like Pan’s Labyrinth – less sumptuously realized, but not without its seductive storybook quality. In the supernatural hauntings, there is hope in the film, hope that is not so different from the kind explored in the film. Night country‘s arctic nightmare: how the dead never leave us, and if we don’t shy away from their pursuits, they may lead us to some form of justice.

Tigers are not afraid is available to stream on Shudder and AMC Plus, or for digital rental/purchase on Amazon and Apple.