Critic Reviews

Madres never loses a strong underpinning of social conscience that seeps into director Ryan Zaragoza’s considered shots.

A subdued score and some by-the-book camerawork can make this urgent story drag, but what it lacks in sting it makes up for with an original script (by Marcella Ochoa and Mario Miscione) and a ferociously pregnant protagonist who would make the “Fargo” character Marge Gunderson proud.

Didactic in its approach to the material—which, to be clear, is absolutely horrifying and very real—Madres has some good ideas, but it fails to see the structural forest for the sumptuously photographed trees.

Calling a movie like Madres by-the-numbers would be a compliment, and an overstatement, because that would indicate that the makers were even mildly successful.

Madres is extremely fragmented and painfully subpar, wasting a chance to tell an intriguing, nuanced story that is still an issue in the present.