A Puerto Rican Gothic Horror Short Film

Victoria comes home for Alejandro's wake. The hacienda is full: family arriving, food on the table, prayers in the corners, the careful performance of a family that has always held itself together by what it refuses to say.

By nightfall, the wake refuses to end.

Doors open by themselves. Bruises rise on skin no one has touched. A lullaby plays on a radio nobody turned on. Objects break under the weight of what was never said out loud. What looks at first like a haunting becomes something more exact and more personal. Whatever has come back wants a confession.

Victoria believes her brother's death is tied to a silence the family chose long ago. As the presence in the hacienda turns on them, room by room, she has to decide whether to protect their reputation or finally say the thing they buried with him.

This story is personal to both of us because we are survivors of sexual abuse.

A few years ago, with his therapist's help, Erik sat down with his parents and told them. He braced for the worst, for that sentence that cuts the air, mejor no hables más de eso. What came back were tears, love, and their arms around him. When he started opening up to friends who had lived through similar things, his chest tightened as he listened. Their stories were closer to horror, with parents who told them to be quiet, friends who stopped speaking, and family who called them liars. One friend told him each word she heard cut deeper than the last. Another said the rejection felt like being burned alive.

Laura's silence took longer to break. Some experiences leave a mark without ever being named, and for years, that was hers, living in the body and in how she moved through rooms. When she finally spoke about it, someone else decided to share her experience publicly, without her consent. That betrayal gave her the conviction to build spaces where these conversations can take place without re-victimizing the people inside them.

When Erik shared the script with Laura, we recognized each other right away. We are making this film with care, alongside collaborators who know how to hold this kind of work, and with a clear responsibility to anyone who recognizes their own family in what they see.

- Laura Alemán & Erik Francisco Medina

The most frightening thing about a family is what it agrees not to say.

Gothic horror gives us a language for the silences that accumulate over generations until they begin to take shape inside the rooms where they were buried. Wounds are passed down like furniture. Grief that should have died decades ago stays alive.

The dead do not always leave, because the living do not always let them.

What comes back to the hacienda is the inheritance of a family that protected its image at the cost of one of its own. The house is beautiful, full of love, and full of everything no one dared to name. Gothic horror allows those truths to live in the same walls. The film is haunting, but the fear is familiar. There is no graphic depiction of abuse. The horror lives in what happens after: in the silence, the disbelief, and the moment a family chooses its image over a person.

The hacienda is the stage and the witness. We are building a world of warm candlelight against deep shadow: colonial arches and wrought iron, checkerboard tile and interior courtyards, religious imagery, family ritual, and the kind of elegance that turns into pressure when you stay inside it too long. Francisco Oller's El Velorio hangs in the hallway. A coquí sings somewhere in the dark. "A la Nanita Nana" drifts from a radio that nobody turned on.

The visual language is rooted in Puerto Rican culture: the rhythms of a family gathering, the codes of respectability that keep a "good family" looking good, the weight of tradition pressing on the people inside it. Our goal is a gothic horror film that could only have come from this place.

Disclaimer: AI-generated images included in this campaign are used solely for concept visualization. Any images or stills from existing films are included exclusively as visual references for the project's artistic direction. AI-generated content will NOT be used for the final product.

This is a short film and a beginning.

We are making it with the ambition of reaching festivals in Puerto Rico, across the diaspora, and beyond, and using it as the foundation for a feature-length version. What we want most is for the film to start conversations about the cost of silence, and what it actually takes to believe a survivor.

If one person leaves the theater more ready to believe a survivor or break a family pattern, the film will have done its job.

This story deals with sexual abuse, family complicity, and the way silence is passed down. We are approaching it with care.

The film does not depict abuse graphically. It stays with what comes after: the silence, the disbelief, the family's response when someone finally speaks. We believe horror can tell hard truths when it is handled responsibly. Our job is to confront what happened without recreating the harm. The co-directors are survivors. The set will operate accordingly, with the protocols and emotional support that this kind of material requires.

Your contribution helps us close the production gap and make El Lamento de la Hacienda with the care, craft, and production value this story deserves. Funds raised through this campaign will support:

• Location & Production Design — transforming the hacienda into a living, haunted witness.
• Practical Effects & Makeup — creating supernatural moments with care, craft, and safety.
• Cast & Crew — compensating the artists and technicians bringing the film to life.
• Meals, Transportation & Logistics — sustaining a safe, respectful, and organized production.
• Sound, Music & Post-Production — shaping the atmosphere, tension, original score, and final finish.
• Subtitles & Festival Materials — preparing the film for audiences beyond Puerto Rico.