Cinema has often romanticised or dramatised vengeance, playing down the old adage, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.” This sentiment warns that vengeance only leads to one’s own ruin. In Suzanne Andrews Correa’s The Huntress (La Cazadora), inspired by true events, Luz, played by Adriana Paz, is severely emotionally and psychologically broken after being raped.
Her boyfriend, Jaime (Eme Malafe), has since moved back in with his mother after being emotionally and physically rejected. Even Luz’s 14-year-old daughter, Alejandra or “Ale” (Jennifer Trejo), has noticed that her mother doesn’t like to be touched.
In The Huntress, Luz’s vengeance is the act of extinguishing who she was before the violent event. What was begun by her attackers, her vengeance ends. To Correa’s credit, she neither plays down this adage nor panders to its oversimplification. Instead, she creeps into the nuance of vengeance for her striking first feature.
Set in the border city of Juárez, Mexico, where it is well documented that women are frequently raped, assaulted, and disappeared (femicide). One radio station reports that a year after the remains of 27 women were found in Navajo Creek, the mothers are still waiting for a second opinion to confirm their identities. In the shadows of the desert lie many secrets, but the most tragic of all might be the fate of these disappeared women, for whom the desert is an unmarked grave.
In a later scene, Luz will choose to put herself at the mercy of the desert rather than board an empty bus. Juárez is a place where women live in fear because men commit crimes with impunity. Luz’s violence is therefore a response to Juárez’s own unrelenting culture of violence and a desire to protect Ale.
The Huntress spans two days, but it feels as if the story’s reach is longer. The shorter time frame empowers the writer and director to home in on the seething pain, the chaotic, disorienting, and combustible emotions that cling to Luz. Despite the tight time frame, Luz’s anger belongs to the many victims of Juárez’s violence, women like Ximena (Teresa Sánchez) who go into the desert to search for the remains of their loved ones.
There’s no time to think, to reflect, or process in The Huntress. Correa and Luz are in the primitive space of fight, flight, or be still.
Through various narrative and cinematographic approaches, Correa and cinematographer Maria Sarasvati Herrera create the feeling that we are in Luz’s personal space, and yet, the filmmakers and Paz nurture an inherent tension. While Correa and Herrera try to get under Luz’s skin, Paz’s performance pushes back, trying to preserve a part of her character, whose pain and anger have sealed it off from the outside world.
Luz’s presence even haunts those scenes she’s not in. For example, in an early scene, when Ale skips school with a friend to try on dresses for a party, their recklessness is seen through the eyes of a loving mother who knows how this world can hurt Ale. The shopkeeper tells the teenagers they shouldn’t be out on their own. Then, after leaving the shop, an older man flirts with them on the bus ride home, which we watch through Luz’s nurturing and protective maternal instincts, even though she is physically elsewhere.
The oppressive fear and violence define The Huntress as a horror film as much as an intense psychological revenge thriller. While inspired by a true story, its roots lie in 1960s cinema, specifically Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, both released in 1960. These films shifted the focus of terror away from fantastical monsters, creatures, and things from another world to the very real world of violent, misogynistic men.
[Spoiler ahead.] Indeed, men are obviously the monstrous in The Huntress, and unlike the bus drivers who raped Luz, or the predatory police inspector who is investigating the murder of the bus driver Luz shot at the beginning of the film, Jaime represents a gentler masculine presence.
Correa also presents femininity in a complex way, when a woman’s voice on the radio reports, “Speaking of rising temperatures, we have the latest on the murder of the bus driver this morning. He has been identified as Juan Jose Rojas. Officials report that the motive appears to be extortion. The suspect, who is still at large, is part of a criminal network that has been intimidating bus drivers for years.” Is the reporter complicit in perpetuating the culture of violence by reporting misinformation, or is she symbolic of the coercive violence women are confronted with?
The success of The Huntress lies with Correa’s compartmentalization of revenge. Her attention is drawn to depicting the fallout of violence against women that rips them apart emotionally, fracturing and denying human connection. The Huntress is a heartbreaking story, and there’s no denying the darkness that shrouds the film, but Correa finds the beauty that lies in these shadows.
For example, in Ms. Mari’s shop, Luz lovingly watches her daughter from afar. It’s a subtle moment, but a mother’s love reaches across the screen. Or in another scene, sat around the table with Jaime, mother and daughter remember a trip they took to Veracruz, where Ale was scared to go into the ocean until she found this fluorescent toy dolphin that spat water. After that, she spent all her time in the water. Luz remembers that her hands turned all wrinkly like an old lady’s, while Ale says, “like a raisin”. There’s also a touching moment when, after a disagreement, Luz washes Ale’s hair.
Moments like these are a harrowing reminder that Luz does her best to protect her daughter during adolescence, but Ale will have to survive as a woman in a dangerous world. This unleashes the realization that women are growing up trapped, as if brought into this world only to be preyed upon, and worse, fodder for male violence. These gentle and affectionate moments lend the story levity by showing how important it is to create memories we can cling to for comfort in times of darkness.
Correa engages with the ethical question of revenge but understands that The Huntress is driven by emotion and impulse. Jaime tells Luz, “Here we all see things that we don’t like. We just have to deal with it.” She angrily replies, “No, you fucking deal, I can’t, because it won’t happen to you. But it will happen to Ale.” When Jaime says revenge isn’t the right way, Luz asks him, “So then, what’s the right way?”
The Huntress acknowledges two responses to pain, trauma, and injustice: healing and pursuing justice, or extinguishing who we once were, and risking furthering the cycle of suffering. Correa is not interested in passing judgement or expressing an opinion on these coping methods. She simply offers an honest observation of different ways to resist or respond to the pain that is forcibly rooted in one’s body, mind, and soul.
The Huntress isn’t a perfect film. There are occasional blemishes on the otherwise impressive execution. In a scene late in the film, Correa and Herrera’s cinematography is misplaced. After Luz takes revenge for a second time, Correa and Herrera are desperate to enter Luz’s headspace by using a handheld camera to create the sensation of the adrenaline rush and disorientation. By not shooting it from Luz’s point of view, it becomes a stylistic detraction, exposing the film’s artifice.
The Huntress, however, remains an impressive film. Any potential flaws, under closer scrutiny, often reveal themselves to be strengths for the journey it takes you on, showing us the different ways a culture of violence inflicts a lifetime of suffering – and how one might live through it.
The Huntress premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition.