From September 15 to October 15, National Hispanic Heritage Month in the United States celebrates and honors the culture and contributions of Hispanic Americans. Because the month brings us halfway into the Halloween season, this list will cover movies that are inspired by ghostly folklore, filmed in creepy stop-motion, or have monsters that are based on the dark history of South America.
If you don’t know the Spanish language, don’t be afraid of the subtitles. Hearing the characters speak Spanish or the Mayan language will only pull you deeper into the culture and stories on-screen.
Here is a diverse collection of different scares from different countries in six horror movies for Hispanic Heritage Month.
Let’s get into them.
The House That Screamed (1969)
Country: Spain | Stream on Amazon Prime
At a boarding school for troubled girls, a stifling environment is enforced by the iron-fist rule of headmistress Señora Fourneau (Lilli Palmer), with punishments and sexual repression filling the classrooms and corridors. Someone is bound to snap.
‘The House That Screamed’ (1969)Credit: Regia-Arturo González Rodríguez
Director Narciso Ibáñez Serrador was famous for writing and directing the anthology horror TV series, Tales To Keep You Awake. In the first horror film that he directed, Serrador crafts a disquieting atmosphere in The House That Screamed with the location and cast. The school has beautiful, old architecture, with the corridors on the inside being shadowy and ornate.
As the youths start to disappear, there are a few stylized kills that could mark this movie as a proto-slasher, but there is a greater focus on the abuse at the school. Unruly girls get lashings by fellow classmates who enjoy inflicting the pain.
This is a Spanish Gothic horror classic where you won’t find ghosts. Humans are frightening on their own.
The Wolf House (2018)
Country: Chile | Stream on Kanopy
‘The Wolf House’ (2018)Credit: Interior13 Cine
For 75 minutes, you are dropped into an avant-garde dark fantasy about a girl who leaves the Colony and takes shelter in an abandoned house from the Wolf.
The 2-D and stop-motion animation dissolves, melts, and reshapes locations and characters within seconds for what looks like feverish dreams. Making everything more creepy is the true account it is based on from Chile’s history. The Wolf House is a piece of fiction, but it’s made to be a propaganda film by a cult leader.
The leader’s name that is used is a real person. Directors Cristobal León & Joaquín Cociña take inspiration from Colonia Dignidad, a secluded and fortified religious community founded by German preacher and heinous criminal Paul Schäfer. It was a cult where crimes against humanity were committed in alliance with the military dictatorship of Chile under General Augusto Pinochet.
The Wolf House is a fairy tale that is far more disturbing than the tales from the Brothers Grimm.
La Llorona (2019)
Country: Guatemala | Stream on AMC+
‘La Llorona’ (2019)Credit: Shudder
The story of “La Llorona” is about the grieving and vengeful spirit of a mother who drowned her children. That classic folklore known in Mexico, Central, and South America becomes a new kind of haunting in La Llorona, where an elderly dictator and his family are besieged by the spirits of the Indigenous people his regime murdered decades earlier.
Released in the same year as the English-language, Hollywoodized, The Curse of La Llorona, which has a completely different story, Guatemala’s La Llorona is the superior of the two.
Writer/director Jayro Bustamante uses the fictional dictator and the violence he inflicted on the Indigenous population as a political allegory of the real-life genocide in Guatemala’s past, based on the military dictatorship and 2013 genocide trial of General Efraín Ríos Montt.
Huesera: The Bone Woman (2022)
Country: Mexico | Stream on AMC+
‘Huesera: The Bone Woman’ (2022)Credit: Cinépolis Distribución
Valeria (Natalia Solián) is pregnant with her first baby, and as the days get closer to her giving birth, her life turns into a domestic nightmare. Her family already expects that she will be an imperfect mother; her husband doesn’t believe her when she soon sees a faceless, broken-limb specter.
Valeria’s habit of cracking her knuckles becomes one of many acts of self-inflicted violence as her behavior grows more destructive. When she seeks help from an ex-girlfriend, and the memories of Valeria’s punk youth flood back in, this directorial debut by Michelle Garza Cervera is more than dealing with the anxieties of motherhood.
It confronts the dark consequences of conformity, bringing a new entry to queer horror.
When Evil Lurks (2023)
Country: Argentina | Stream on AMC+
‘When Evil Lurks’ (2023)Credit: Shudder
Two brothers attempt to rid their community of a “Rotten,” a person who is possessed by a demon that wants to enter the human world. Their effort fails, triggering an escalation of possessions and shocking deaths.
If you haven’t heard of When Evil Lurks or had it spoiled for you, get ready for a feel-bad horror movie that pulls no punches. No one is safe from getting harmed as interesting lore is established surrounding a “Rotten.” In the world you see on-screen, the supernatural is real; there are even specific individuals who are meant to handle cases of possession, but the public has forgotten that demons are a real threat.
Writer/director Demián Rugna takes inspiration from the hazardous pesticides that have killed people in rural Argentina, and how these communities are desensitized to the health crisis because of the lack of urgency from the people in power.
Hive (2026)
Country: Canada | Stream on Tubi
‘Hive’ (2026)Credit: Tubi
The kids are not all right in the gated community of Coral Grove, where the playground is the main hub for carefree fun —and which holds grotesque secrets among the swings and the slides.
Hive is as much about scary children as it is about class issues. Xochitl Gomez and Aaron Dominguez play siblings, Sasha and Marco, who enter the community as the workers to the affluent adults living there. Sasha is a babysitter; Marco is a landscaper. When their day descends into danger from something monstrous lurking within Coral Grove, they can only trust each other to get out alive.
Directed and written by Felipe Vargas, Hive is fun, candy-colored social horror with inventive set pieces that will gross you out or fill you with claustrophobia. At the same time, there are cultural details, like the candy that Sasha brings as a snack (which becomes an integral plot point) or the commitment by Gomez to have the movie dubbed for Spanish speakers, with added support from Vargas and Dominguez.
Are there any Hispanic horror movies that you would recommend?
