Possession, but Make It Personal
If you’ve ever watched a standard Hollywood exorcism movie and thought, “This could really use more goat’s milk, Nahua ritual, and heroin withdrawal,” The Old Ways heard you. Christopher Alender’s folk horror tale takes one of the most overworked subgenres—the possession/exorcism movie—and drags it into the jungle outside Veracruz, scrubs off the Catholic boilerplate, and replaces it with something messier, more intimate, and far more interesting.Wikipedia+1
It’s still about a demon, sure. But it’s also about addiction, generational trauma, colonized identity, and what happens when you go home to report on “local witchcraft” and discover you’re actually the main event. Think The Exorcistcrossed with a family reunion and a very bad trip.
Cristina Lopez: From “Objective Journalist” to Reluctant Witch
Cristina (Brigitte Kali Canales) is a Mexican-American reporter who left Veracruz behind for Los Angeles and a respectable career, which in horror terms is just code for “emotionally avoidant and ripe for spiritual disaster.” She returns to her hometown allegedly to cover witchcraft at the ruins of La Boca—but really, she’s there to die. Numbed by a lifetime of foster care, depression, and heroin, she plans to overdose somewhere no one will find her.Wikipedia+1
Unfortunately for her suicide plan (and fortunately for the movie), she’s already being snacked on by a demon: Postehki, “the death god of broken things,” which is a little on the nose but also extremely accurate branding. She wakes up chained in a remote hut, stared down by Javi (Sal Lopez) and Luz (Julia Vera), a Nahua bruja who takes one look at her and basically says, “Yup, infestation.”
Canales is excellent, giving Cristina a prickly, sarcastic edge that keeps her from ever becoming just a victim. She’s skeptical, pissed off, and high, which is not the standard posture for people undergoing exorcism. Watching her slowly go from “You people are crazy” to “Okay, I am absolutely full of snake demon” is half the fun.
Luz, Javi, and the Jungle Clinic from Hell
Instead of a solemn priest muttering Latin, we get Luz—a small, steel-spined bruja who treats demonic possession like a chronic condition she’s extremely tired of treating. Javi plays muscle and nurse, force-feeding Cristina goat’s milk and enforcing salt lines like a gruff spiritual bouncer.
The hut itself feels like a cross between a clinic, a prison, and a shrine. No sleek exorcism chamber here; just crudely painted walls, candles, ropes, and whatever Luz can shove into a ritual bowl. It’s all very DIY apocalypse. The film leans into that texture: this is not the sanitized, church-approved version of spiritual warfare. This is local knowledge, passed down, improvised, and bloody.
There’s a dark humor in how routine all this seems to Luz and Javi. Cristina is screaming, snarking, vomiting black goo; they’re working through a battle-tested checklist. “Goat’s milk? Check. Teeth coming out of abdomen? Check. Snake goes back in? Okay, that’s new, but we’ve seen worse.”
Body Horror Meets Emotional Horror
The possession scenes are gloriously unpleasant. You get:
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Snakes writhing in places snakes should never be.
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Animal teeth pulled from Cristina’s abdomen like the world’s worst magic trick.
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Hair and tar-like goo pouring out of her mouth in a particularly nasty set piece.Wikipedia+1
But the body horror is always linked to Cristina’s inner wreckage. Postehki doesn’t just show up because “demons be demon-ing”; it’s drawn to her brokenness—her addiction, her suicidal ideation, her sense that she’s never belonged anywhere. As Luz points out, a demon like this doesn’t need a Ouija board; it just needs someone who’s already given up.
The movie has fun with the gross-out, but it never feels empty. Every time Cristina convulses, you’re watching her wrestle not just a monster but her entire history. It’s therapy, if therapy involved more screaming and slightly fewer snakes.
Folk Horror That Actually Respects the Folk
One of the best things about The Old Ways is how rooted it is in Mexican and Nahua traditions without turning them into exotic props. Luz isn’t a kooky “witch doctor” stereotype; she’s a serious spiritual practitioner who clearly knows more about what’s happening than anyone with a white collar and a Bible.
The rituals—salt lines, face paint, chants, offerings—feel specific, tactile, and lived-in. They don’t always work, which is also refreshing. When Luz fails to fully extract the demon and ends up sacrificing herself by seizing its heart, it lands as the culmination of a life spent fighting things nobody else wants to acknowledge.Wikipedia+1
Folk horror often treats local beliefs as either quaint or sinister. Here, they’re the only thing standing between Cristina and utter annihilation. The horror isn’t “these people still believe in old ways”; the horror is what happens when those ways die with them.
From Subject to Bruja: Reclaiming the Story
Cristina’s arc—from heroin-addicted outsider to the new bruja—gives the film its bite. She starts as a journalist there to extract a story from her “exotic” roots, treating the local culture like content. By the end, she’s literally wearing the bruja’s paint, performing rituals, and insisting on a more compassionate approach than the old “break them until the demon comes out” playbook.
When Postehki jumps into her cousin Miranda through a simple scratch, Cristina realizes this isn’t just about saving herself. She rejects Luz’s harsher methods and improvises, combining what she’s learned with actual care. It’s a neat thematic flip: she’s honoring the old ways while also updating them—turning inherited trauma into something new and survivable.Wikipedia+1
By the final act, when her LA editor Carson staggers in from La Boca carrying more heroin (read: a walking trigger with a company credit card), Cristina doesn’t fall for it. She sees the demon behind him and immediately gets to work exorcising him too. The journalist has become the healer, the colonizer of stories now decolonizing her own soul. Also, firing your boss via exorcism is an extremely strong career move.
Addiction, Recovery, and Demon as Metaphor (But Also Literal)
Plenty of horror movies use demons as metaphors for addiction or depression, but The Old Ways actually commits to the bit. Postehki isn’t just a symbol; it’s a parasitic presence that exploits Cristina’s self-hatred and withdrawal. Her decision to toss the last of her heroin is framed as both a spiritual and physical turning point. The line between “I’m possessed” and “I’m sick” becomes productively blurry.Film Inquiry+1
The film treats recovery as an ongoing fight, not a one-and-done ritual. Killing the demon isn’t the end; it’s the moment she becomes responsible for others who are still in the dark, like Carson. It’s a sly nod to how addicts often end up sponsoring others: you survived your demon, now help someone else survive theirs. Just with more chanting and fewer AA pamphlets.
Small Cast, Big Payoff
With essentially four main characters—Cristina, Miranda, Luz, and Javi—The Old Ways feels almost like a chamber piece. That intimacy works. You get time to see the strained affection between Cristina and Miranda, the quiet loyalty of Javi, and the way Luz balances tenderness with ruthlessness.
The performances are uniformly strong, but Canales and Vera stand out. Cristina and Luz feel like two ends of a generational thread: the daughter who ran from her roots and the elder who never left them. When Luz dies to save Cristina, it’s not just a noble sacrifice; it’s a literal passing of the torch (or, more accurately, the mortar and pestle).Loud And Clear Reviews+1
Final Verdict: The Old Ways, New Blood
The Old Ways doesn’t reinvent horror from the ground up, but it doesn’t have to. What it does is take a tired template—woman tied to bed, demon snarling, spiritual experts arguing—and infuse it with cultural specificity, thematic heft, and a welcome willingness to let its heroine be deeply messy before she becomes powerful.
It’s scary when it wants to be, gross when it needs to be, and quietly moving in the way it treats addiction, identity, and family. Plus, any movie where the final girl defeats her demon, claims her heritage, and then looks at her coked-up boss like, “Sit down, we’re doing an exorcism,” has its priorities in order.
If you’re up for possession horror with actual soul—and don’t mind a little snake action along the way—The Old Ways is well worth letting into your house. Just maybe keep some goat’s milk handy, you know, just in case.
