In My Mother’s Skin is a truly frightening and gruesome fairy tale
Jasmine Curtis-Smith and Felicity Kyle Napuli in In My Mother’s Skin. | Image: Sundance Institute
It does not take long for In My Mother’s Skin to get gross. Within its first few minutes, the horror film from writer and director Kenneth Dagatan subjects you to some truly gruesome images of flesh-eating creatures, and honestly, it never really lets up. This is a blood-soaked fairy tale, one that mashes together folklore and history in a way that’s reminiscent of Guillermo del Toro’s defining work, Pan’s Labyrinth — only it’s a lot scarier.
The movie is set in the Philippines in 1945 in the waning days of World War II, with Japanese forces occupying the country. Things are bleak. Early on, you hear kids sharing horrible stories about the barbaric acts of the Japanese soldiers, and the family at the center of the story is getting by on…
