The Old Ways: Review

2nd November 2021

Cristina (Brigette Kali Canales) grew up in a small Mexican village and has vivid memories of the time her mother was possessed by a demon. Now all grown up, Cristina returns home but unfortunately the same people that incarcerated her mother have found her too and believe that she has fallen to the same fate.

Imprisoning Cristina, they begin with her exorcism and at first Cristina doesn’t seem all that concerned. After all, her job is to go to the places that people tell her that she can’t go, so she sees it all as a big misunderstanding. However, when Cristina starts to experience things and the treatment to eradicate the devil inside her get more intense, Cristina realises that they’re serious and that there may be no way out.

The Old Ways is a horror movie for exorcism fans, but set in Mexico rather than the familiar setting of the Catholic Church. Latin is replaced by mystical incantations and the crucifixes are replaced by buckets of blood.

However, although The Old Ways seems to want to play on people’s ideas of what an exorcism really is and what they’ve come to believe, it feels as if the story may be more important than the horror – at least to the filmmakers.

Starting off with a jump scare, The Old Ways may lead its audience to believe that what they are about to see will be a typical exorcist-type horror movie. The problem is though that once the initial scene is over and Cristine starts to realise the depths of her situation, it’s just taken a bit long to get going.

Seeing as Cristina is in a familiar setting to her and that she has her relative, Miranda (Andrea Cortés) to keep her company, she doesn’t seem all that concerned and neither do the audience which causes an issue. If they were to believe that her predicament was life threatening and that the film was meant to scare, then perhaps it should have continued this pace.

However, the story is diverted far too often by the main characters talking in a room seemingly as if nothing has happened between the light moments of horror. The finale may please horror fans and the twist is genuinely surprising, but The Old Ways tries to do something new and fails to scare.

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