but,in this myth-flavored case,
narco-Satanists.) A 10-year-old
schoolgirl, Estrella (Paola Lara),
joins a street gang for protection
after the disappearance of her
mother, who’s been raising her.
The gang, comprising four orphan
boys, has carved out a junk-strewn
encampment—with a large flat-
panel TV—in one of the dead
zones created by Mexico’s urban
warfare. Its pre-adolescentjefe,
who calls himself El Shine (Juan
Ramon López), is so smart and
charismatic that you could imagine
him growing up to be president of
Mexico, or a drug lord. (Ms. López
directs these kids with a delicate
but masterly touch.)
The film tracks Estrella’s com-
ing of age while she and the boys
are pursued by drug-cartel thugs
specializing in human trafficking,
and a politician who’s in cahootswith them; a sense of corruption is
all-encompassing. Estrella brings a
quasi-maternal presence to the
group in exchange for its protec-
tion. What’s more, she brings
three wishes granted by her
teacher during a terrorist attack
on her school. Magical wishes fig-
ure prominently in the story. So do
ghosts of the cartel’s victims,
along with a symbolic tiger whose
elegant likeness is spray-painted
on a wall, and a trail of blood that
follows Estrella wherever she goes.
Her wishes are not granted in con-
ventional ways, but this is not a
conventional film. It is by turns
harrowing, affecting, unexpectedly
funny, truly scary and fantastical.
(The cinematographer was Juan
Jose Saravia.) The fantasy grows
overlush from time to time, but
Ms. López has created an original
work of art in genre disguise.Kirsten Dunst, left, and Alexander
Skarsgård, below, in Showtime’s ‘On
Becoming a God in Central Florida’SHOWTIME (2)TELEVISIONREVIEW| DOROTHY RABINOWITZ
entertaining and occa-
sionally witty on the in-
tertwined subjects of bedevilment
and in-laws.
iii
Issa López’s “Tigers Are Not
Afraid,” a film from Mexico in
Spanish with English subtitles, has
its roots in a rich national heritage
of imaginative cinema that has led,
in the past couple of decades, to
an indisputable invasion of such
distinguished Mexican filmmakers
as Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo del
Toro and Alejandro González Iñár-
ritu. Ms. López honors that past
and builds on it with this dark
fairy tale set against the horrific
devastation of Mexico’s drug wars.
The narrative here is structured
around children who’ve become
orphans after their parents were
carried off by narco-terrorists.
(And not merely narco-terroristsFROMLEFT: SHUDDER/EVERETT COLLECTION; TWENTIETH CENTURY FOXPaola Lara and Hanssel Casillas in ‘Tigers Are Not Afraid,’ left; Samara Weaving in ‘Ready or Not,’ aboveTHE WORLDformerly known as
real is so chockablock with surreal
hideousness that horror flicks can
seem quaint by comparison. Enter-
tainment, of course, never was
meant to represent reality. From
Buster and the Little Tramp to Fred
and Ginger and the apple of Dr.
Frankenstein’s eye, the movies have
swept us up with make-believe. One
of this week’s scarefests aims to do
just that. “Ready or Not” fires up
classic genre tropes—haunted
house, innocent beauty in jeopardy,
satanic rites—then takes pleasure in
poking fun at itself. Still, the film
takes more pleasure than it gives.
Another horror feature, “Tigers Are
Not Afraid,” combines different in-
gredients—frightening reflections of
contemporary reality plus the
power of fairy tales. Improbably,
even paradoxically, the mixture ig-
nites. The movie isn’t perfect, but
it’s haunting in the very best sense.
“Ready or Not” takes its title
from a game of lethal hide-and-
seek that provides its narrative
structure. The heroine is not just
innocent or beautiful—that is, she
seems to be the former and is cer-
tainly the latter. She is a bride,
Grace (Samara Weaving), and on
her wedding night she makes dis-
tressing discoveries about the fam-
ily she has married into. They are
(a) crazy as jaybirds and (b) de-
voted to a family tradition that in-
volves (c) taking up arms, then (d)
chasing the family’s newest mem-
ber all over the gloomy mansion
they call home until they either (e)
off her on the spot or (f) subject
her to a ritual that is mentionedonly glancingly at first but doesn’t
sound like a bubble bath. (The film
was directed by Matt Bettinelli-
Olpin and Tyler Gillett from a
screenplay by Guy Busick and Ryan
Murphy.)
Early in the evening one family
member says, disparagingly,
“She’ll never be one of us.” An-
other replies, ironically, “Of course
not, dear, she has a soul.” It’s a
nice quip in a spectacle notable for
its soullessness. (Also notable, to
give full credit, for its economy.
Shot mainly in a single locale, this
is a modest piece of product
clearly fated to turn a profit.) Our
hearts don’t go out to Grace in her
many moments of peril, or to oth-
ers who meet ghastly ends that in-
clude death by dumbwaiter. It’s all
B-movie stuff, though sporadicallyFILMREVIEW| JOE MORGENSTERN
Summer Horror,
Hot and Not
I
nthe relentlessly grim
satire “On Becoming a God
in Central Florida” (begins
Sunday, 10 p.m., with two
back-to-back episodes, on
Showtime), devotees to
the cultlike Founders American
Merchandise—a multibillion-dollar
corporation whose operations bear
no small resemblance to a pyramid
scheme—are militant in their joy.
And they’re glad to show it. FAM
doesn’t tolerate employees who
express doubts about their work
or their future success, which is
why the company employs nasty
terminology in its training to refer
to such people.
Still the joy of FAM’s enthusi-
asts is heartfelt. Drawn in by the
promise that they could soon be-
come millionaires and billionaires,
they fall hard for the picture of
the future ahead, of the examples
laid out before them of all the peo-
ple FAM has made rich. Their
dreams of wealth can be fulfilled,
they learn, if they have the right
spirit—which they can prove by
toiling long hours selling FAM in-
spirational tapes, placing FAM’s
products and, above all, enlisting
new members.
Along the way, as these 10 epi-
sodes make clear—the writing is
notably free of subtlety—FAM’s aco-
lytes seem to give up whatever ca-
pacity for rational judgment theyever had. They go to FAM meetings
in which they and others like them
are celebrated for having had the
courage to walk out on their jobs—
the word “jobs” is spelled out in a
derisive chant. They’re going to be
owners of elegant homes—like the
ones they feel themselves honored
to visit when attending FAM’s moti-
vational dinners—and of helicop-
ters and everything else they ever
wanted. So happy are they in the
swing of the FAM spirit that it
hardly ever occurs to them toworry that they’re getting practi-
cally no financial reward worth
mentioning for laboring night and
day for the company. And when
the worry does break through,
someone in FAM’s cadre of official
guides is always on hand to ex-
plain that this is all part of the
plan for them, for their future mil-
lions—reasoning they have no
trouble accepting.
One intended target of the se-
ries, set in the early ’90s (and cre-
ated by Matt Funke and RobertHer husband, Travis (Alexander
Skarsgård), comes to an untimely
end in episode 1. She’s portrayed
by Kirsten Dunst, who sustains the
series with a life-giving perfor-
mance full of heart and, possibly
more important, steel. The show is
all hers. The cold, unblinking look
with which Krystal confronts
threats, irrational arguments, lies
and obfuscations quickly becomes
familiar, yet never loses its power.
She’s involved with FAM by neces-
sity, but she is never for a moment
blind to its fraudulence.
In this she could hardly have
been more different from her hus-
band, an instant and rapturously
devoted believer in FAM and all of
its promises and explanations of
the world’s workings. Driven to
hysteria, in episode 1, by his vision
of a new future, he’s the perfect
introduction to the character and
tone of the faithful—a role Mr.
Skarsgård carries off with consid-
erable panache, if of a distinctly
unnerving kind.
He’s the exemplar of all the sup-
pliants who long for just a mo-
ment in Obie’s presence—who are
prepared to fulfill every demand
by the FAM leader or his spokes-
men, however preposterous, in the
belief that it’s likely another test
of their worthiness and strength.
Refusal would be unthinkable. In
one scene scores of lavishly attired
worshipers of Obie and company—
one in a stylish dress she had
shoplifted, money being tight—at-
tend a FAM gathering where they
all end up having to scrub a fancy
ballroom floor covered, for rea-
sons best not revealed here, with
huge piles of smashed fresh fruit.
Which they do without complaint,
on their hands and knees.
For all its one-note darkness,
the episodes move along compel-
lingly, thanks in good part to se-
quences involving evidence-gather-
ing against Obie led by a daring
and determined Krystal along with
a cocaine-sniffing TV reporter.
Then there’s the complex, if also
slightly repellant romantic connec-
tion that grows between Krystal
and the youthful Cody (a jewel of a
performance by Théodore Pel-
lerin)—an innocent sort and also a
fanatic member of the FAM faith-
ful. He’s fallen hard for Krystal,
whose aforementioned wintry look
as she glances at Cody says all
there is to say about her complete
lack of sexual interest in him. Still,
anything is possible,
“On Becoming a God in Central
Florida”—a series shot in Louisi-
ana—has plenty to recommend it,
including its drama, cheerless
though it may be. Above all, it has
Kirsten Dunst.OnBecoming a God in Central
Florida
Begins Sunday, 10 p.m., ShowtimeLutsky), would seem to be the
ruthless corporation and its flag-
waving chief, the revered Obie
Garbeau II, who rattles on about
the American spirit and a great
many other things, and whose san-
ity is clearly in question—a brave
performance by Ted Levine, but
for little. Given the impossible
over-the-top bluster of every scene
written for Obie, nothing could
have made this character work.
But there is another target at
which the show takes far more ef-
fective aim—its prime target, it
would appear. Namely, FAM’s
faithful believers, whose gullibility
and devotion to the company and
its head are drawn mercilessly,
with details that reveal them in all
their starry-eyed worship of
wealth and power. Drawn, too, in a
way that makes the fact that they
are also victims of FAM’s greed
seem very much beside the point.
There is, however, one member
of the army of the needy and am-
bitious working for FAM who
stands apart. She’s unshakably ra-
tional and hostile to delusional
ambitions, having been married to
a man who had plenty of them.
She’s Krystal Stubbs, semi-impov-
erished employee of a water park
till she lost that job, and she
knows who she is—newly widowed
and a mother who has no income,
who is about to lose her house.Pyramid Power in ‘Florida’
A10|Friday,August 23 , 2019 THEWALLSTREETJOURNAL.
LIFE&ARTS