Talk about a match made in horror heaven. Issa Lopez, director of the excellent festival darling Tigers Are Not Afraid, is teaming up with Blumhouse for a new film, which is based on the true story of societal panic spread through a Roman Catholic school for girls in Mexico City.
Lopez will write and direct Our Lady of Tears, which is based on the Epic Magazine/Vox article “The Haunting of Girlstown” by Daniel Hernandez. The story centers on “a mass hysteria epidemic with supernatural roots, that in 2007 spread through Villa de las Niñas, an all girls, Catholic boarding school in the outskirts of Mexico City. The school recruited and isolated socially neglected girls coming from families living in extreme poverty and in remote areas of Mexico.” You can check out the NYTimes’ coverage of the event at the time here.
Lopez said about the news, “The moment I read the Epic article, I knew I wanted to tell this story. I myself attended a Catholic school in Mexico City. I grew up on a steady diet of supernatural visitations and miracles, and of the real life horrors that young girls who grow up in poverty face every day in Mexico, and around the world. Having the chance to tell that story with Jason [Blum] and his team, producers of such socially incisive genre classics like Get Out, and of so many true horror gems, is a huge privilege. I couldn’t be more excited about this movie.”
Whatever Lopez does, not only am I down for it but it’s going to have a ton of attention based on what she was able to do with Tigers Are Not Afraid, which has become a Shudder champ since it was released last year. Lopez is also working on a werewolf Western with Guillermo Del Toro.
