Films & Events

Huesera: The Bone Woman reimagines a Mexican folktale about a woman who assembles animal bones into a skeleton and sings until the creature comes alive and flees, transforming into a woman just before vanishing across the horizon. The movie follows Valeria, whose pregnancy turns sinister as a faceless woman with broken bones terrorizes her. Struggling to keep her mind, body, and future from fracturing, Valeria seeks help from a group of folk healers. A cautionary tale about the dark side of motherhood, Huesera combines body horror and psychological dread to explore the social expectations of women and the disturbing consequences of trying to meet them.  

This is the first film in a three-part series Possession: Contested Bodies and the Monstrous-Feminine, which depicts experiences considered most crucial to women’s self-fulfillment in a patriarchal society—the transition into womanhood and the challenges of pregnancy and childbirth—rites of passage that become attacks from hostile others. In each film, when a female character deviates from her expected role as obedient daughter, wife, or mother, she suffers a visceral loss of bodily autonomy alongside a new and dangerous form of empowerment. Possession explores this subversive power dynamic, asking us to question which is scarier: the monster that possesses or the monstrous and untameable woman? The fiendish fetus, demonic daughter, and murderous mother figures central to the series implore you to find out for yourself.

Curated by Julia Elliott and Nima Yolmo, Possession: Contested Bodies and the Monstrous Feminine is sponsored by Women’s and Gender Studies at USC. The series features presentational and marketing materials created by South Carolina Honors College students in Elliott’s Gender and Monstrosity in Horror Films course. 

Other films in this series:

Prevenge

The Exorcist (1973)

93 min.