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BINGO HELL

LUPITA IS NOT GOING TO LET DEMONIC DEVELOPERS TAKE AWAY HER BINGO NIGHT



★★☆☆☆ (Don’t Bother)

Director: Gigi Saul Guerrero

2021


As a beautiful morning rises in the poor, sunbaked neighborhood Oak Springs, a diverse community of elderly locals go about their day. Mechanic Clarence works on an inherited car, Yolanda is opening her beauty salon, Dolores is fighting with her teen grandson’s no good mother, and Lupita is giving herself a pep talk in the mirror before going out to look for someone to terrorize with her brand of prickly affection. She breezes through a town that is slowly going from geriatric to gentrified, and when she sees a boho young lady deemed to be an interloper, the older woman spills coffee over the girl’s blouse while muttering, “fucking hipsters” with glee. I have a bevy of Hispanic aunts and believe me, there’s always one Lupita.



Thanks to Bingo Hell, I have found my goddess. Lupita is a woman of a certain age who tells you how it is, defends her friends to the death, doesn’t care what anyone thinks, and gets shit done without waiting for people to make up their minds. She’s the best kind of horror heroine—one who doesn’t need saving. She considers herself the de facto leader of an aging neighborhood that is now showing signs of change. This is obviously upsetting to the people who are getting up in years, and their reaction and feelings are experienced by anyone who is lucky enough to get old.


It turns out Lupita has been clearing crime from the neighborhood for decades with the help of her sidekick Dolores (L. Scott Caldwell). Each aged character has a stake in Oak Springs surviving, so when the beloved bingo hall is sold to a flashy owner named Mr. Big—who comes carrying mood lighting and big prizes—everyone is excited, everyone except a furious Lupita, who knows there’s a catch. This bad bitch has seen it all, leading to a healthy does of cynicism, and Oak Springs’ population is lucky that at least one person isn’t vulnerable enough to be swayed by money.


“BINGO HELL HAS GREAT LATIN FLAVOR AND A WONDERFUL ADDITION THE LINEUP OF HORROR HEROINES, BUT THIS IS ALL IT HAS GOING FOR IT.”


Bingo Hell has great Latin flavor and a wonderful addition to the lineup of horror heroines, but this is all it has going for it. The only reason to watch this movie is Adriana Barraza’s killer performance as Lupita, and I’m sorry, but that’s not enough for a recommendation. Lame, formulaic deaths and lack of surprises are not the only problems. I’m surprised I didn’t have a seizure due to almost 80 minutes of trendy strobe-light editing. Despite the carnival-colored filters, Bingo Hell is as ugly as a movie about a kid’s birthday party filmed by Rob Zombie. There’s also an ambivalence to the thin story. The first scene involves a man hallucinating and eating what I take are bingo balls, but after the scene ends and the movie gears up, I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to be afraid of. Actors meant to be in a trance were told to portray the Joker on bath salts, and then there’s the question of Mr. Big. I never understood what our villain was supposed to be, or what his motivation was. A demon who likes to win? Satan eating souls? There’s ectoplasm everywhere, so…is he a ghost?


I once saw a 1977 interview with a 108-year-old woman who was asked the difference between her childhood and modern times, and she told them that everything has changed, nothing is the same. I never considered how traumatizing that must have been for her. I’m of the generation that remembers what life was like without cell phones and household computers, so if I think hard enough, I can smell the sea change. As we all get older, we look around and start to realize that time has crept up on us and whittled down our old familiar surroundings; Bingo Hall makes a good point about our struggle to accept aging and what comes with it. Home is where the heart is, but without Lupita, it would be one big mess.





GENRES: Diverse Characters, Feminist-Friendly, Funny, Monster/Creature


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