I Am Frankelda 2026 Movie Review
Soy Frankelda is a prequel to the HBO mini series Frankelda´s Book of Spooks, and tells the story about how Francisca Imelda ended up becoming Frankelda and her particular situation stablished in the series.
So, do you need to watch the series before watching the movie? I actually believe it´s better if you do it after, I´ll explain that later.
First of all, the animation department is superb. Character desings are beautiful and scary at the same time, we get to see a lot of different Spooks, my favourite design beeing Chamán Coyote. Scenary is full of color and details. The passion for the project shows in every frame, we can see the inspiration in Remedios Varo and Leonora Carrington´s work, and when you know the directos were on a real budget, having to get a mortgage on their houses, then you can only but admire the dedication.
Now, the plot revolves around Francisca wanting to become the best horror writer of all time, but in the XIXth century women were not taken seriously for this matters, and people in town considered her a freak. Herneval ,the prince from Topus Terrentus, (the Soopks´s land), invites her to help him write nightmares to scare the people in our world, since they´re loosing their fear of the Spooks. However, this will affect the position of the royal writer, Procustes, who will seek to steal Frankelda´s stories and take control of the reign of Topus Terrentus.
Simple plots don´t mean mean they´re bad, the main problem here is the lenght and the pacing. At nearly two hours, there´s simply not enough plot to sustain the runtime. And if you, like me, watched the series before the movie, the first act kinda drags, since the last episode of the series covers these events in a faster way. A tighter cut of the film would certainly benefit the whole experience.
Character development is really not present here, Procustes, the villain, is the one who has more interesting trates and motivations. So if we get to be more interested in the villain than our heroes, well, you end up not caring that much about them.
Another minor complain is the audio mixing in the songs. While the orchestra makes an awesome work with the compositions and everyone that signs makes it flawlessly, the mixing makes that some lines are unintelligible.
Overall, the movie is worth your time and money. This is a project that deserves our love and support. Frankelda´s been building a strong fanbase in Mexico and Latin America, and I really hope it can extend all over the world. We forgive the flaws in Hollywood movies, but tend to be harsh on independent movies. Time to change our mindset an do it all the way around it.
P. D. If you want to support more high quality mexican Stop Motion creators, please check out Muerte al Buen Cine on social media, although it´s not ment for children lol.
