I won't kill you. I'm going to sacrifice you: On Bienvenidos al infierno (2021) by Jimena Monteoliva"

Abstract

This article reads Bienvenidos al infierno (Jimena Monteoliva, 2021) as an audiovisual counter-archive against the contemporary pedagogy of cruelty. Starting from the analytical fissure proposed by the film’s liminal sequence—a proleptic symptom of mafioso sacrificial matrices—the text traces the spectral dimension of patriarchy. Far from privatizing violence under the worn-out trope of demonic possession, the film exposes a bloody liturgy executed by a complicit fraternity; namely, a hypermasculine plurality led by a master of ceremonies. Facing the potency of this critical insubordination, the analysis examines the dismantling of the anthropophallogocentric order. At the core of this unresolved dialectic, the protagonist manages to survive by weaving interspecies kinships. Ultimately, the essay posits horror cinema as an aesthetic chimera capable of tangibly mapping the gears of the capitalist-patriarchal uroboros.