Behind the Couch

When Flavia is enrolled at a new school she is befriended by Verónica, an unpopular orphan who lives with her ailing grandmother and whose nanny regales her with tales of witches, fairies and spells. What begins as an innocent enough friendship soon turns coercive, as Verónica confides to Flavia that she is a witch in disguise, making Flavia a reluctant accomplice in several acts of wickedness. As the line between what is real and what is imagined begins to blur, Flavia descends into a terrifying spiral of magic, manipulation, petty jealousy, and murder. Written and directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada, and part of a rich tradition of Mexican Gothic horror cinema - which includes such titles as The Witch’s Mirror (1962) and The Curse of the Crying Woman (1961) -  Poison for the Fairies unfurls as a complex study of the fraught and intense friendship between two impressionable girls whose dabbling in witchcraft and descent into occultism leads to tragedy. While it quite comfortably...

Ever since Mary Shelley’s Creature first spoke, uttering the words "I expected this reception [...] All men hate the wretched; how, then, must I be hated, who am miserable beyond all living things!" , horror has provided a voice for the voiceless. It has made readers and audiences privy to the outsider's perspective, and in doing so, has challenged mainstream, ‘normative’ values and presented the experiences of the marginalised and ‘othered’. From ground-breaking literary works by Mary Shelley, Ann Radcliffe, Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter, to trailblazing filmmakers such as Lois Weber, Alice Guy-Blaché and Maya Deren, whose work flickered fiercely across the early silver screen, women – historically silenced and marginalised, and currently living in a world where violence against women and girls is practically ambient - have used horror to interrogate and subvert traditional male-centric narratives and examine themes of agency, bodily autonomy, motherhood and restric...