Monica Castillo

So entitled, very much the pompous American tourist.

Yeah.

So then it has a complete different shift.

And that's what keeps you guessing.

It's always been there.

Maybe we didn't have the language for it and the way that we address it and talk about it is not the same that it used to.

Yeah.

I think it's also interesting in terms of when we're thinking about trauma in horror movies, that the characters would do different things in older films.

The way that we process trauma or talked about it then or how it was perceived then, I was just thinking, I think it's Day of the Dead.

where one of the main characters has recurring nightmares of zombies bursting through the wall and killing her, and she's waking up from a nightmare.

In essence, that was some sort of post-traumatic stress from the situation that she's in.

So it's always been there in the background in some formation, but how she reacts to it is very different than maybe the way that we would expect it to be seen now or the way that directors are dealing with it now.

So it's interesting here in Holcomb, you also have this like framing device of the story within a story, because the story that he tells the bartender is this sort of like fantasy sort of thing.

He's almost kind of like a Stephen King kind of figure in some way of like of this famous horror writer.

Right.

one who's resentful of his fame and kind of hates his fans.

So then the one that he's mulling through and doesn't quite see a way through is this thing about a conquistador and a child and the journey that they're on.

And originally, it's very bleak.

And it's the bartender who tells him, like, oh, I'm not going to read that.

You know, there's a journey and an emotional journey that's parallel to the story within a story and how he, you know, his perspective changes the way that story is shaped.