Once Upon a War, There Was a Fairy With a Snack Problem
There’s a fine line between folk horror and folklore that makes you wish for an early death, and Kenneth Dagatan’s In My Mother’s Skin pirouettes over that line in combat boots. Set in World War II Philippines, this Amazon-acquired fever dream promises gothic fairy-tale terror — but mostly delivers an hour and forty minutes of watching people rot while a fairy hovers nearby like an influencer looking for good lighting.
It’s beautifully shot, competently acted, and absolutely soul-sucking — and not in the fun, The Witch kind of way. No, this is the sort of movie where you find yourself checking your watch to see if the fairy’s eaten anyone yet, only to realize she’s still circling the buffet, fork in hand, chatting about your inner trauma.
The Premise: “The Fairy Will See You Now”
The story follows Tala (Felicity Kyle Napuli), a young girl living with her dying mother (Beauty Gonzalez) in an isolated mansion. Her father has gone off to find help from the Americans — or maybe Starbucks; it’s hard to tell, because he’s never seen again until it’s narratively convenient.
Rumors swirl that Daddy Dearest stole gold from the Japanese. Naturally, the Japanese soldiers are not thrilled, so the family’s left to fend for themselves while hiding in the world’s gloomiest house — a location that looks like Crimson Peak if Guillermo del Toro had shot it after losing a bet.
As the mother’s condition worsens, Tala encounters a beautiful fairy (Jasmine Curtis-Smith) who offers help. You might think, “Oh, how nice — magical aid in a time of crisis!” But remember: this is a horror film. In this world, even the fairies eat meat, lie compulsively, and look like they’d steal your kidneys for a skincare routine.
The Fairy: Like Tinkerbell, But With Carnivore Energy
Jasmine Curtis-Smith’s fairy is the film’s standout element, equal parts ethereal and unnerving. Imagine if Tinkerbell got trapped in a Catholic nightmare and developed a taste for long pig. She slinks through the shadows offering help, and every time she smiles, you just know someone’s going to end up missing a liver.
Unfortunately, the film gives her about as much to do as a Zoom background. She pops in, mutters some ominous fairy nonsense, and disappears again until it’s time to ruin dinner. She’s a great concept — a mythical being feeding on human suffering — but Dagatan’s script seems allergic to pacing or follow-through.
By the time she finally starts eating people, you’re too numb to care. It’s like waiting an hour for a cake to bake and discovering the oven wasn’t even on.
The Tone: Grim, Grimmer, Grimmiest
Dagatan clearly wanted to craft a Pan’s Labyrinth-style fable drenched in Filipino folklore and post-colonial despair. What he delivers instead feels more like Pan’s Nap Time — visually gorgeous, emotionally distant, and paced like molasses on sedatives.
Every frame could hang in a museum: shafts of light pierce the darkness, candle flames flicker against peeling walls, and the jungle outside hums with menace. But somewhere along the way, the story got lost in its own atmosphere.
You know that feeling when someone tells a ghost story that’s all mood and no plot? You sit there in the dark, politely waiting for the jump scare, and realize the scariest thing is how long it’s taking? That’s In My Mother’s Skin in a nutshell.
The Family: Sad, Sick, and Surprisingly Passive
Tala is our innocent protagonist, and she’s quite good — Felicity Kyle Napuli gives the role a haunting sincerity that deserves a better movie. Her mother, Ligaya (Beauty Gonzalez), spends most of the runtime decomposing gracefully, proving once again that motherhood in horror is a one-way ticket to purgatory.
There’s also Bayani, Tala’s younger brother, whose job description is “be scared” and “occasionally bleed.” It’s hard to fault the kid — if I were trapped in a mansion with a flesh-eating fairy, I’d probably also choose to fade into the wallpaper.
The problem is that everyone behaves as if they’ve accepted death as a mild inconvenience. There’s no urgency, no fire, just long stares, whispered prayers, and the occasional burst of fairy violence to remind you this isn’t a historical drama about anemia.
The Fairy Tale Without Teeth
Let’s talk stakes. Not vampire stakes — narrative ones. This movie doesn’t have any.
The fairy’s motivations are vague (“I like eating families, I guess?”), the war backdrop never adds real danger, and the emotional core — a daughter trying to save her dying mother — feels recycled from a dozen better films. Dagatan wants us to feel the creeping dread of inevitability, but what we feel instead is the creeping dread of buffering.
You keep waiting for the story to escalate. Maybe the fairy turns the whole household into her personal charcuterie board. Maybe the Japanese soldiers show up for a final showdown. Maybe Tala discovers the gold and uses it to buy the fairy’s silence.
Nope. What you get instead is an endless slow-burn of misery porn, culminating in a finale that’s as predictable as it is depressing.
The Gore: Delicate But Digestible
To be fair, the film’s horror elements look good when they happen. There’s some beautifully practical makeup work — decaying flesh, blood-soaked linens, and a dinner scene that might make you cancel your next grocery run. But the violence is strangely restrained, as if the movie is afraid of ruining its own prettiness.
Folk horror thrives on the ugly — mud, sweat, rot, and desperation. But In My Mother’s Skin feels too composed, too self-conscious. Even when someone’s face is being chewed off, it’s lit like a perfume commercial.
It’s horror with good posture, and that’s just not as fun.
The Symbolism: Heavy-Handed and Empty
There’s a lot of talk about colonialism, faith, and the loss of innocence — and the movie wants you to know it’s deep. The problem is, it keeps tapping you on the shoulder every five minutes to remind you how deep it is.
The fairy represents greed! The mother’s sickness represents the decay of colonial identity! The war represents… well, war!
By the time the fairy starts spoon-feeding entrails to the family, you’re practically shouting, “Yes, I get it, trauma is inherited — can we please move on?”
The Pacing: A Slow March to Snack Time
Let’s be honest: this film could’ve been a brilliant 30-minute short. Instead, it stretches a two-act parable into a full-length endurance test. Entire scenes play out like the director lost his watch and was waiting for divine intervention to yell “cut.”
By the hour mark, you start to root for the fairy — not out of fear, but because she’s the only one taking initiative. Everyone else just stares mournfully while she plans dinner.
The Ending: Eat, Pray, Die
The climax finally delivers the blood we were promised, but it’s too little, too late. The fairy does her thing, the house falls into chaos, and the message — that innocence dies in times of war — lands with all the subtlety of a mortar shell.
The film closes on yet another quiet, artful shot of decay, as if beauty alone can make up for exhaustion. It can’t. By then, you’ve been so thoroughly drained that you’d almost welcome the fairy’s toothy embrace just to escape the runtime.
Final Verdict: The Devil Wears Wings, But the Movie Wears You Down
In My Mother’s Skin wants to be a haunting fairy tale about desperation and decay. What it delivers is an aesthetic dirge — a film so committed to misery that it forgets to entertain.
It’s gorgeous to look at, sure. But so is a coffin.
Rating: 4/10 — A film that mistakes slow for profound, trauma for storytelling, and fairies for food critics.
