The exhilaratingly inventive director/screenwriter Michelle Garza Cervera is on the line, and it just happens to be an unofficial national holiday in her world. Our interview takes place on Friday the 13th.
“A good day to watch a horror film,’’ Garza said, delighted.
Then again, for Garza, any date serves as a good chance to savor a box of popcorn and a good jump scare. Anyone else looking to commemorate this spooky spot on the calendar would be well served to press play on “Huesera: The Bone Woman,” the darkly provocative 2022 feature that marked Garza’s feature debut.
“Huesera” begins with a happy pregnancy and devolves into a search across the desert and lots of creepy bone-snapping. Garza called it a “maternal horror film,” perhaps the first of its kind out of her native Mexico. Variety described it another way: “Spine-chillingly terrifying.”
Here’s another scary thought: Garza is a rarity. Studies estimate women make up less than 6 percent of all directors in the horror genre.
Geena Davis, the founder and chair of the Geena Davis Institute, likes to say that “If they can see it, they can be it.” On that front, Garza is proud to report that she’s experienced that phenomenon first-hand. She’s seen how her breakthrough success as a horror director is helping to topple barriers and challenge norms.
“At many screenings that I’ve been to all around the world, I can see many young girls approaching me at the end,” Garza, 38, said. “They were very moved, and they wanted to do horror. Some of them have been working on short films.
“I see that a lot. And I feel very lucky to have them approaching me, thinking that ‘Huesera’ has been one of their influences or has been inspiring for them.”
Garza’s films have earned her over 40 international prizes, and her journey from movie-loving kid to acclaimed director ought to serve as a road map for any girls looking to follow in her bloody footsteps. Garza recently directed a 20th Century Studios horror film, “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” which premiered on Hulu in October 2025.
“I was very embraced by the horror world, at least in Mexico and Latin America, while I was growing up,” Garza said. “For my short films, all the doors were open, and that has to do with the fact that it’s the world for the weirdos. And I always feel very comfortable there.”
“But, yeah, there was a point where I understood that I was one of the only females around. And I do have to say, I do think it has been changing for sure, because art is always a reflection of what’s going on in the world.”
When “Huesera” screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, Garza won Best New Narrative Director and captured the Nora Ephron Award, which recognizes filmmakers with a unique point of view.
There’s a story behind that …
An Education in Horror
Garza grew up in Mexico City. As a kid, she never understood why her visiting friends would enter her home and say, “Your house is so weird.”
She sure understands it now.
“Yeah, I grew up in a very strange house in the sense of art,’’ Garza said with a laugh. “We had very strange objects all around. Oh, my God, my parents were weirdos for sure.”
Her father was an industrial designer who specialized in furniture making. (He designed the cradle for “Huesera.”) Her mom was a graphic designer with a knack for silkscreening and screen printing. Her brother is a visual artist.
And Garza? Her medium of choice was movies, right from the start.
“I was obsessed,’’ she said. “I was a teenager who would watch like 10 movies a week. I became like the girl who liked weird horror and the strange stuff. Like, I love John Waters. I was very much into going against rules or expectations of what’s supposed to be ‘good’ in films.”
What Garza realized even as a teen was that these movies offered an expectedly potent vehicle for exploring deep, universal and untapped aspects of the human experience.
“There was a moment when I understood how powerful genre is,” she said. “You can speak of big themes or very complex ideas or psychological processes that we all go through.
“It’s a very entertaining genre, but at the same time, you can talk about many uncomfortable things through it. So I think it’s just perfect for the kind of stories I’ve been writing for a long time. And it’s also something that comes out of me in a very natural way.”
Asian films, especially, became a profound influence. Movies like “Onibaba” (1964) left an impact, as did directors like Kaneto Shindo or Kiyoshi Kurosawa. “All the horror masters from Japan and Korea, I always have that tendency to study them,’’ she said.
A seminal moment came in 2005, when she watched “Lady Vengeance,’’ a Park Chan-wook film about a wrongfully imprisoned woman who seeks revenge through increasingly brutal means.
“That’s the first time I came out of a movie theater thinking, ‘I don’t want to do any other thing in my life,’’’ Garza said.
To understand Garza’s artistic sensibilities, it’s important to know her other major influence growing up.
“I also got into punk music and I used to play in many bands,’’ she said. “So I guess that created a combination of me trying to break rules or trying to challenge authority.
“‘Huesera’ definitely has a lot of punk, right? So, hopefully, honestly, someday I would love to do an even more horror movie about punk. That would be awesome.”
The Importance of Female Voices in the Horror Genre
Even a punk-loving rebel like Garza needed to learn the fundamentals of her craft. She graduated from The Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, an art school in Mexico City. She was awarded a Chevening Scholarship to study in the United Kingdom, where she completed an M.F.A in Film Directing at Goldsmiths, University of London.
Garza was tapped to direct “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle” after a 20th Century Studios team-led Spotlight Screening Series brought attention to her work by screening “Huesera.”
She had role models along the way, including some female faces. Lucrecia Martel, a director/screenwriter/producer from Argentina, was among her favorites. (Vogue once called her, “one of the greatest directors in the world right now.) “I think she’s a genius and I grew up admiring her a lot,’’ Garza said.
She also looked up to Lynne Ramsay, the Scottish filmmaker, whose “Die My Love” starring Jennifer Lawrence premiered in 2025.
“Neither one of them is a horror director, but they definitely use a lot of horror tools for their filmmaking,’’ Garza said of Martel and Ramsay. “So there’s something about them that has definitely been in my blood throughout the years.”
And while some devices are universally scary (“The call is coming from inside the house!”), there’s a power in having more women in the horror genre. Consider that “Huesera” explores themes of motherhood, body image, free will, isolation and what pride.com once called “the complexity of women writ large.” The importance of women in genre filmmaking shows up in the type of stories being told.
“That’s the point of cinema, right? You’re trying to convey how life feels for you,’’ Garza said. “So, yeah, of course, gender is going to be one of the big aspects that is going to be different.
“That’s the thing with horror. It has the ability to talk about forbidden themes. …
With many horror movies, you analyze them and they have extremely sexist perspectives and ways of looking at women, too.”
Garza noted that more than 10 women are killed each day in her native Mexico.
“There’s a lot of femicide here,’’ she said. “So, yeah, as a woman being fearful, and still walking in the street, everywhere, every city, fear crosses your body and your perspective in different ways, right?”
The Future of Horror
Looking for a happy ending? To Garza, that would mean a day when more women are writing, directing and producing horror movies – and nobody says a word about it.
“I really hope to see in my life, and hopefully soon – five or 10 years – to reach that point where it’s not even a conversation, where it’s just like a normal thing,’’ she said. “In terms of gender, I really hope we reach that point where it’s just, it’s not even a discussion.
“I don’t want us to be exceptions. We should be the norm, what’s common. Like if you’re a director or a head of department, it has to do with your work and your experience and how long you’ve been working to reach this point. And not about your gender. It shouldn’t be about that.”
Until then, Garza will continue to bring that punk rock attitude and encourage other aspiring artists to do the same.
“In terms of genre, I have no doubt that amazing things are going to keep coming from female voices. I mean, we’ve seen that through the last few years,’’ she said. “Some of the most amazing horror movies have come from female directors and writers. And I just hope it doesn’t stop.
“Because that world, sometimes it feels like it’s going backward in many ways. So it’s just scary.”