Variety praises Pablo Larraín’s “My Sad Dead” as an ambitious, macabre and darkly comic modern Gothic based on Mariana Enriquez’s short stories. The film follows Ema, a retired doctor who can see violent ghosts, as she becomes reluctantly involved in the troubled Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Piedrabuena, using supernatural horror to explore urban violence, social isolation and the damaging effects of brutalist architecture.

Mercedes Morán is singled out for a superb performance as Ema, whose encounters with confused, traumatised dead people are rendered through understated visual effects and a bleak pinkish-grey aesthetic. The story gains fresh momentum when Ema’s estranged family arrives from Seattle with Julia, a stigmatised, morbidly obese teenager who can also communicate with the dead—and pursues that connection in unsettlingly sexual ways—while the film balances body horror, satire, tragedy and unexpected hope.