While the vast majority of his career has been dedicated to biopics (like Neruda, Jackie, Spencer, Maria) or historical and political epics about Chile (Tony Manero, El club, Santiago 73, post mortem, No), Pablo Larrain has previously ventured into the fantastic. Most recently, he did so on Netflix with the film The Count, which reimagined Augusto Pinochet as a centuries-old vampire. On the series front, the Chilean filmmaker also made his horror debut with the mini-series Lisey's Story, adapted from Stephen King.
Though he will return to his preferred genre with the film Once, which will explore the direct consequences of the 1973 military coup in his native country, he first makes a detour to Netflix with a fantastic and horrific mini-series, My Sad Dead. The streaming giant has just released a first promising trailer.
"I SEE DEAD PEOPLE"
For those who don't speak Spanish, you'll have to rely on YouTube's translated subtitles for now. But that's enough to grasp the essence of the plot for My Sad Dead, a loose adaptation of the novel Mis muertos tristes by Argentine author Mariana Enriquez.
The video opens with the death of an old woman. However, she continues to haunt certain members of her family who are capable of seeing the dead, including her daughter, Ema (Mercedes Morán), a recently retired doctor, and Ema's niece, Julie (Dolores Fonzi). But the murder of three teenagers in Piedrabuena extends this curse to the entire neighborhood, blurring the line between life and death and forcing everyone to confront their own ghosts.
The series thus promises to unfold an intimate narrative with a subtly pervasive fantastic element, serving as a pretext to examine the woes of a family, and on a larger scale, an entire community grappling with violence. We can only hope that, unlike the adaptation of One Hundred Years of Solitude, this Spanish-language series, without internationally recognized headliners, will receive the visibility it seemingly deserves.
The episodes will be released on Netflix on September 24.