Guillermo Amoedo on His Haunting Horror Comeback ‘Loved Ones’: ‘Loving Someone, Becoming Friends, is a Death Sentence in This Place’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Spirits of those loved and lost wreak global havoc in director Guillermo Amoedo’s comeback title “Loved Ones” (“Seres Queridos”). In development, the project is produced by Harvey Grisalez, Senior Vice President at Spain’s Onza Américas (“Isla Brava”), and heads to Sanfic’s genre sidebar Morbido Lab in August.

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“When Guillermo shared the script for ‘Loved Ones’ with us, we were captured by the originality of the story and the disturbing universe the characters are exposed to. The opportunity to go hand in hand with Guillermo, a representative of the horror genre in Latin America, to produce this story and bring it to an international audience has been a true honor for us at Onza Américas,” Grisalez told Variety .

The Uruguayan-born director saw high success with his 2017 possession title “The Inhabitant” (“El Habitante”), which managed a staggering theatrical run and lingered in the top three on Netflix the month it debuted on the streamer in 2022.

Former Eli Roth co-scribe on “The Green Inferno” and “Knock Knock,” the director seeks to bring a visionary and rare angle to the scripts he crafts. He cites “Smile,” “Barbarian,” “Talk to Me,” and Demian Rugna’s Argentine gem “When Evil Lurks” as similar examples of boundary-snubbing genre knockouts while giving further credit to a fanbase ravenous for fresh takes.

“Each new film that seeks to break out of the mold and present something different motivates us screenwriters and directors to follow that same path. Not to imitate what they did, but to continue discovering and presenting horror films through new approaches, themes and staging that haven’t been seen until now and that, unlike other genres, have a large audience eager to see innovative works,” the director mused.

“Fortunately, and despite the fact that many remakes and formula films are produced, the horror genre seems to be an inexhaustible source of new ideas and proposals that, when well done, attract large audiences with budgets that are usually tiny in most cases, in comparison with big Hollywood productions,” he continued.

“With ‘Loved Ones,’ my intention is to be able to provide a new vision of this subgenre that, in addition to having a lot of tension and great moments of terror, also presents a dramatic situation that hasn’t been seen before in this type of film and that, I’m sure, will attract a very wide audience.”

The narrative takes place post-apocalypse after the ghosts of deceased loved ones have decimated their living counterparts at the opposite end of any pure affection, leaving only the solemn, unloved and emotionally deficit behind to roam the bleak remnants of earth.

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A weary mother and daughter have managed to survive the disaster but must follow a rigid and cruel decree to protect themselves from the same fate, not to become too attached to one another.

“Any person who loved their mother, their son, their brother or their lover, and was loved back by that person, has been persecuted and killed by the spirit of their loved one, causing a chain reaction that left humanity on the brink of extinction. Loving someone, becoming friends, is a death sentence in this place,” Amoedo relayed.

“The idea was born from wanting to give a twist to the post-apocalyptic horror subgenre, which has already been widely exploited around the world in recent decades. Zombies, robots and aliens have devastated humanity multiple times, but something that I’d not seen until now was an apocalypse caused by spirits or ghosts,” he explained.

Having lent his skills to productions in Latin America and abroad, Amoedo admits the genre is oft-subjugated to the industry side-eye and hopes adding to the canon of increasingly successful horror films will loosen the reins on producers who choose the tried and tested over more ingenious leaps outside the bounds.

“Unfortunately, in Latin America, despite their constant success stories, genre projects tend to be looked at disdainfully by an industry that prefers to bet, mainly, on comedy, with recognized actors and that often leave other types of films without funds, like horror films, which are abandoned until a new commercial success emerges – produced with few resources – and then everyone wants to repeat that same success looking for the same type of story,” he admitted.

“Recently, new obstacles have been added to the innate prejudices towards genre films- the algorithms of Streaming platforms. Increasingly, and in their understandable position of betting on the safe side, platform executives make their decisions based on the analysis of the algorithms that tell them that they must continue producing the same thing that’s been successful. Until now, in Latin America, that’s comedy. This causes a vicious circle in which genre films are increasingly banished by comedies and any hint of novelty in a work is systematically rejected, as it doesn’t have a history of success,” he added.

“Unlike drama or comedy, terror has to continually validate itself before the studios or producers, evading the algorithms and reminding everyone that, when there’s a good genre story with novel and risky elements behind it, there will always be a high possibility of success for this type of film.”

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