2025
I knew Poison for the Fairies was about two little girls playing at witchcraft and spinning dark fantasies, but I wasn’t prepared for the exquisite, macabre dreamscape Carlos Enrique Taboada creates. Set in the golden afternoon light of 1965 Mexico City, the film feels like a Charlie Brown cartoon reimagined by a gothic fairy tale witch, where adult faces are almost entirely absent, glimpsed only in death, and fragmented, shadowy moments.
Veronica, an orphaned girl raised on supernatural stories by her caretaker, befriends Flavia, a privileged new student. . Their relationship is a weird, intense, shapeshifting thing; Veronica manipulating, Flavia getting pulled deeper into her invented world. And their clothes! They change outfits constantly, like they’re performing different versions of themselves with each scene. Their costumes shift like mood rings, each outfit a new character in their strange ritual.
This isn’t horror, exactly. It’s not even pure fantasy. It’s something more complicated: a story about how kids use imagination to survive loneliness. Veronica has invented this entire witch persona as a way to have power, to be something more than just a kid without parents, something powerful and mysterious. Flavia becomes her reluctant participant, her almost-unwilling apprentice, caught between fascination and fear.
The cinematography is remarkable in its deliberate simplicity. The camera stays perpetually at child height, making the adult world feel distant and irrelevant. Everything looks like a memory, hazy light filtering through dusty windows, deep shadows in corners, each frame composed like a folk tale illustration, tableau vivants of childhood’s darker impulses.
What emerges is less a supernatural narrative and more an exploration of how young girls might reclaim power through storytelling. Veronica transforms herself from lonely orphan to potential witch, creating a mythology that gives her more than the real world offers. It’s about imagination, invention, and survival.
Looking for more 31 Days of Horror? Day Twenty 2024 | Day Twenty 2023 | Day Twenty 2022 | Or check my 31 Days of Horror category for more!
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