Madres

For the Sofia Kourtesis album, see Madres (album).

Madres
Official release poster
Directed by	Ryan Zaragoza
Written by	Mario Miscione Marcella Ochoa
Produced by	Jason Blum John Brister Lisa Bruce Marci Wiseman Jeremy Gold Matthew Myers Roya Rastigar Shanjay M. Sharma
Starring	Tenoch Huerta Elpidia Carrillo Kerry Cahill Ariana Guerra Jennifer Patino Britton Webb Agung Bagus Betsy Borrego Evelyn Gonzalez Jason Bayle Rose Bianca Britton Webb Harlon Miller Amelia Rico
Cinematography	Felipe Vara de Rey
Edited by	Kristina Hamilton-Grobler
Music by	Isabelle Engman-Bredvik Gerardo Garcia Jr.
Production company	Blumhouse Television
Distributed by	Amazon Studios
Release date	October 8, 2021 (2021-10-08)
Running time	83 minutes
Country	United States
Languages	English Spanish

Madres (lit. 'Mothers') is a 2021 American horror film written by Mario Miscione and Marcella Ochoa directed by Ryan Zaragoza. It stars Ariana Guerra, Tenoch Huerta, Elpidia Carrillo, Kerry Cahill, Agung Bagus, Jennifer Patino, Britton Webb, and Evelyn Gonzalez. The film is the seventh installment in the anthological Welcome to the Blumhouse film series.

Jason Blum serves as a producer under his Blumhouse Television banner.

Plot

The story begins with Diana and Beto, a young Mexican-American couple in the 1970s, moving to a remote farming town in rural California. Beto has been offered a job managing a farm, and the couple sees this as an opportunity to start fresh, especially as Diana is several months pregnant with their first child. However, Diana is uneasy from the moment they arrive, their new house is old, creaky, and filled with strange symbols and ominous objects, including a strange doll she finds buried in the backyard.

Not long after settling in, Diana begins to experience terrifying hallucinations and disturbing visions. She hears whispering voices, sees shadows moving in the dark, and has nightmarish dreams involving faceless women screaming in pain and blood pouring from walls. Her body begins to react strangely, she develops unexplained rashes on her stomach and arms, and experiences intense stomach cramps and bleeding. The local doctor dismisses her concerns, attributing it to stress and a difficult pregnancy, but Diana knows something is wrong, something more than just physical.

She starts to investigate the town’s history and discovers that many Latina women in the area have suffered miscarriages or have mysteriously become infertile after giving birth. These women have been labeled as cursed by the community, and there’s even a rumor that a bruja (witch) is behind the sicknesses. Diana begins to suspect that these so-called “curses” are a cover-up for something much more sinister.

As her visions intensify, she starts to see a ghostly woman in her house, sometimes appearing bloodied and holding a dead infant, sometimes crying or screaming in agony. The apparitions lead her to hidden areas of the house, including a locked basement where she finds medical files, photographs, and newspaper clippings that suggest women like her were taken and sterilized against their will.

The horror escalates when Diana confronts the town’s nurse, who has been overly kind and insistent about Diana’s prenatal care. The nurse becomes hostile, and Diana learns the horrifying truth, the local clinic has been secretly sterilizing Latina women without their knowledge, under the guise of delivering their babies. Many of the women were drugged during labor and woke up to find they could never have children again. The clinic is part of a larger eugenics program designed to limit the reproduction of non-white communities.

Diana’s visions turn violent, she sees flashbacks of women being tied down and cut open, screaming while blood sprays across the walls of the clinic. The ghost she keeps seeing was one of the victims who died on the operating table. The spirits of these women are not just haunting Diana, they're trying to warn her.

Diana discovers that she is being targeted for sterilization. When she goes into early labor and is taken to the clinic, she fights to remain conscious. With the help of another local woman whose sister had gone missing after giving birth, Diana escapes the operating room just before they can operate on her. A confrontation ensues between her, the nurse, and the doctor, ending with a violent struggle. The ghostly victims appear, terrifying the nurse into madness. The doctor is fatally wounded in the chaos, his body grotesquely impaled on surgical instruments as the spirits exact their revenge.

Diana gives birth safely, and the illegal clinic is exposed. As authorities arrive, they uncover decades of medical abuse and discarded files of women who had been forcibly sterilized. The house where Diana and Beto lived is burned to the ground, along with the cursed relics and remnants of the past. In the end, Diana cradles her newborn, the final shot shows a bloodstain on the nursery wall.

Cast

• Tenoch Huerta as Beto
• Elpidia Carrillo as Anita
• Kerry Cahill as Nurse Carol
• Agung Bagus as Man 2
• Rose Bianca as Barbecue guest
• Francesc Tort as Padre
• Ariana Guerra as Diana
• Jennifer Patino as Veronica
• Britton Webb as Man
• Evelyn Gonzalez as Marisol
• René Mena as Rafael Ernesto
• Jason Bayle as Dr. Nelson
• Ashleigh Lewis as Nurse Molly
• Robert Larriviere as Dr. Bell
• Joseph Garcia as Tomas
• Betsy Borrego as Pregnant Woman
• Harlon Miller as Man
• Rachel Whitman Groves as Woman
• Amelia Rico as Gabriela
• Leydi Morales as Rosa
• Sam Fisicaro as Woman
• Sharon Elizabeth Smith as Receptionist
• Gustavo Munoz as Rafael
• Vanessa Motta as Teresa
• Britton Miller as White Man 2
• Harlon as White Man 1

Release

The film was released in the United States on October 1, 2021 by Amazon Studios.

Reception

On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 72% based on 18 reviews, with an average rating of 5.80/10. Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 43 out of 100, based on 5 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Accolades

Accolades for Madres

Award ceremony	Category	Recipient	Result	Ref.
NAACP Image Awards	Outstanding Writing in a Television Movie or Special	Mario Miscione, Marcella Ochoa	Nominated
Imagen Foundation Awards	Best Primetime Program - Special or Movie	Madres	Nominated
	Best Actress - Drama (Television)	Ariana Guerra	Nominated

External links

• Madres at IMDb
• Madres at Rotten Tomatoes