Interview: Director Gigi Saul Guerrero seizes her moment with ‘Satanic Hispanics’ and ‘V/H/S/85’

Gigi Saul Guerrero is making her mark on horror one stab at a time. Since making her directorial debut with the short film “Dead Crossing” in 2011, the Vancouver-based, Mexico-born horror actress/filmmaker has been busy writing and directing segments for film anthologies like México Bárbaro and ABCs of Death 2.5, episodes of the TV shows Into the Dark and The Purge, as well as the web series La Quinceañera. Guerrero made her feature-length directorial debut with Bingo Hell in 2021, which is part of Blumhouse Productions’ Welcome to the Blumhouse film series. Now, she’s hitting Halloween season full force with superbly spooky entries in not one but two horror anthologies: “Nahuales” in Satanic Hispanics and “God of Death” in V/H/S/85.

In Guerrero’s contribution to Satanic Hispanics, a horror anthology directed by an all-Latine team, one character’s trespasses against nature provoke supernatural wrath. In her V/H/S/85 segment, a historic disaster awakens an ancient evil. Whatever the scary story, the unifying theme of Guerrero’s filmography is clear: Neglect your heritage or disrespect your culture, and it’ll come back to bite you on the ass. 

In an interview with Mashable, Guerrero dug into these dark inspirations for her homespun horror. 

Guerrero found inspiration for her V/H/S/85 short in an infamous earthquake.

V/H/S/85’s producers rang Guerrero after three of the movie’s five segments were already complete. Under most circumstances, that gives a filmmaker precious little time to drum up a plot, find locations, and cobble together a cast and crew. But Guerrero landed on her concept right away: a short set smack in the middle of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake. 

“It was a no-brainer,” Guerrero said via a Zoom interview. “Raynor [Shima, producer] told me, ‘Wasn’t there an earthquake then? Why don’t you do an earthquake film?'” 

Guerrero grew up in Mexico City, and though she was born years after the earthquake struck, its aftermath was nonetheless part of her daily existence — as were the accompanying local superstitions about the cause for recurring quakes. September is earthquake month all across Mexico, but the country’s capital has experienced other major earthquakes in the last 40 years, notably in 2017 and 2022, both on Sept. 19.

“Living in Mexico City, there’s so much superstition about why we have an earthquake every year at the same time,” Guerrero said. “What is causing it? That has been a question since I was born.” 

Science has one answer: Mexico rests at the edges of three fault lines, and is vulnerable to regular temblors as a consequence. But for V/H/S/85, Guerrero embraced the legends and fables as a way of confronting her own past and commemorating the tragedy through her brand of horror storytelling. 

“I always think about my background, my family, my upbringing from Mexico City,” Guerrero reflected. “We have so much folklore to discuss, and we do live through a very tough third-world situation. In most of Latin America, you wake up almost at war every day.” But such real-life horror is not something to shy away from. “We’re not afraid to discuss it,” Guerrero laughed. “Heck, we celebrate Day of the Dead! ‘You come on over, ghosts! We’ve got enough things on the outside to worry about.'”

This combination of personal experience and cultural sensibility led Guerrero to “God of Death,” her contribution to V/H/S/85. The segment starts as a disaster picture: A TV news crew is crushed under falling concrete when the earthquake begins; then a rescue team aids the lone survivor (Ari Gallegos) in an attempt to flee the building. But their efforts lead them further into its crumbling recesses, where they make a frightful discovery.

“It was so cool to grab a historical event,” Guerrero explained, “To be the first segment [of the franchise] that does that, and be the first segment that shoots with an actual VHS camera — I’m so glad we did that. And also, so much of Mexico City has not been cleaned up since then. So we were very meticulous in the locations we went to that are pure rubble.” 

Authentic background details like these lend a true-to-life foreboding to “God of Death.” On the lighter side, Guerrero herself cameos as a stumblebum on-scene correspondent; the character is based on a real Mexican broadcaster who “would always mess up on camera.”

Satanic Hispanics brought Guerrero back to her roots.

“God of Death” was shaped by Guerrero’s memories of Mexico City and the impression left on it by the 1985 quake, but the idea to shoot on location came from working on “Nahuales.” When the producers for Satanic Hispanics invited her on board, Guerrero decided to make the trip to Mexico, a move that connected her that much more with the story she had wanted to tell. 

“It just clicked,” she added. “Actually going there, actually making things as real and as authentic [as possible], it only felt right. It felt insane! Especially with what we were filming about — shaman rituals and all that.” 

Guerrero traveled to Catemaco, Veracruz, the birthplace of witchcraft, where magic is a tourist attraction as well as a way of life; being so close to such pre-colonial traditions gives “Nahuales” grounding even at its most horrifying. 

In the short, a CIA collaborator on the run (also played by Gallegos) falls into the clutches of a group of nahuals — humans attuned to their primal side, capable of transforming into an animal counterpart. By defiling their territory, the man has riled these supernatural residents, and he pays for his sin in blood and agony. It’s an outcome that’s common to folk horror around the world, and a message about the importance of preserving Latine culture that is intrinsic to Guerrero’s body of work.

Guerrero uses horror to provoke scares and discourse.

For Guerrero, turning the stuff of real life into visceral terror is just as important as interrogating the sociopolitical issues she draws on for informing her films – gentrification (Bingo Hell), assimilation (Into the Dark: Culture Shock), a loss of connection to one’s background (“Nahuales” and “God of Death”). “I really embrace subject matter that pays off with the shock and the blood and the gore,” she said. 

“That’s why I love genre so much,” Guerrero explained. “You’re able to get any big subject or political matter that is not easy to discuss, and your movie’s going to be able to start a conversation — whether it’s good or bad.”

Guerrero thinks back on Culture Shock, which was released on July 4, 2019, near the end of the Trump presidency, and how the reactions from fans who felt seen in her horror story gave her validation. “I felt like I’m contributing with my voice,” she said. “I’m contributing for us to at least think about it. Maybe I’m not gonna make a big difference, but if I can get people to think about it, and even more to discuss it? Girl, what’s up!”

How to watch: V/H/S/85 premieres on Shudder Oct. 6; Satanic Hispanics is now in theaters.