Netflix’s Chupa Misses the Mark on Reimagining the Chupacabra Myth

When I found out that Netflix’s upcoming fantasy film Chupa is a re-reading of the Chupacabra myth, I was immediately intrigued. The Latin American folktale of a creature that feeds on goat’s blood dates back to the 1970s, so of course I had been terrified of the Chupacabra when I was a kid.

I was interested in how the story could be retold, particularly by Mexican director Jonás Cuarón, son of the filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón. Despite its potentially not child-friendly title (depending on how the term is translated in Spanish), Chupa aims to make the horrifying, fear-inducing legend into a cozy, family-friendly narrative. The movie kind of succeeds in its mission, even if in a saccharine, tropey style. Evoking an E.T. vibe with ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia, Chupa is a fun, emotional, slightly formulaic take on a monster many Latine kids grew up fearing. 

The film starts at a familiar place: 13-year-old Mexican-American Alex (Evan Whitten) is bullied in his school in Kansas City for eating the Mexican food his mother made him at lunch. It’s a classic Latine tale: upset because of the rejection of his peers, Alex starts to hate his own heritage because it makes him different from the non-Latine white American kids in his school. Alex has also recently lost his father, so his mother decides he has to go visit his dad’s family in Mexico. In the midst of rejecting his heritage and mourning his father’s untimely death, Alex goes to Mexico begrudgingly, using his Gameboy as a way to ignore his surroundings. But his abuelo Chava (Demián Bichir) and cousins Memo (Nickolas Verdugo) and Luna (Ashley Ciarra) are determined to include Alex in their games, activities, and memories, even if Alex himself is reluctant to join in. 

While reconnecting with his family, Alex discovers a baby Chupacabra in his abuelo’s shed. Turns out, Chava found the creature while driving home and decided to take care of it. He then realized it had been separated from its family while being hunted by U.S. scientist Richard Quinn (Christian Slater). While Chava doesn’t know what Quinn wants with the creature — which the family nicknames “Chupa” — he knows it’s not good. And indeed, Quinn is trying to capture the Chupacabra so he can harness its magical healing powers and sell them to the highest bidder as a miracle medicine. Alex and his family decide to protect Chupa in any way they can and reunite him with his family as soon as possible.

Chupa attempts to connect the journey of the baby Chupacabra who has been torn away from his family to Alex’s recent loss of his father. This connection is clunky and somewhat nonsensical; Chupa is running away from a capitalist mad scientist, while Alex is mourning his dad’s death. Not to mention, the characterization of Alex’s dad is lacking: we don’t know much about him except that he’s Mexican. Even though it’s implied Alex and his dad were close, it is also implied that Alex doesn’t know much about him or his family. For example, Chava used to be a lucha libre star. Alex only finds out that his dad had also trained to be a luchador when he visits his abuelo. Though Alex’s father’s passing is recent, it often feels like he’s discovering things about his family that were kept from him for years, for unclear reasons. 

In this sense, Chupa tries (and fails) to weave too many storylines together, perhaps to strengthen the Chupacabra’s importance to Alex’s arc of recuperating his love for his Mexican heritage and family. While some of these moments are touching, others fall flat because of the confused and contradictory narrative around Alex’s alienation from Mexico and his supposed closeness to his late father. With the added layer of the bullying Alex suffered back in Kansas City, the narrative attempts to tackle too many issues at once. In the end, many don’t actually get closure, nor is the connection to Chupa’s story ever made clear.

The film finds its footing when it focuses on the re-reading of the Chupacabra myth, rather than Alex’s relationship with Chupa as a reflection of his familial relationships. Though the CGI Chupacabra isn’t very charming, it is a cuddly monster being hunted by a white American man attempting to exploit and profit off a wild, mystical animal that should be allowed to roam free. I hoped this would be the central dilemma of the film, as it could have echoed the points many Indigenous Latin American land defenders have been making for years about the exploitation of Global South territories by American and European companies. 

For these Indigenous activists and land defenders, humankind's insistence on separating humans from the land created most of the problems of the modern world. This separation and the implied human superiority that comes with it moves humans to continuously exploit the earth for profit, despite warnings from scientists and activists about climate change and the imminent destruction of humanity. As Brazilian Indigenous thinker Ailton Krenak wrote in his book Ideas to Postpone the End of the World, “[Separating humans from the earth] suppresses diversity, denies the plurality of different kinds of living and existing.” 

In the film, the American scientist’s terrifying obsession with capturing Chupa and exploiting the creature’s blood is exactly the kind of suppression Krenak is talking about. This is also what Alex’s relationship with Chupa could have emphasized — yes, perhaps the Chupacabra drinks goat’s blood, but is it justifiable to capture an animal that thrives in the wild to sell its blood to Americans? Until when will human exploitation of the land come before other forms of life? 

While Chupa is a nice family film to watch with viewers of all ages, it strikes me as a missed opportunity. It could have gone deeper into themes of U.S. imperialism and climate change disaster in a format that would be digestible for Latine children. The misunderstood monster of Chupacabra could have been transformed into an example of how humans turn to destruction and domination when faced with something they don’t understand. The contradictory narratives and uneven script, which were trying to do too much for a simple monster and kid story, delivered an average, forgettable movie that had no discernible center. 

There are very few female characters of note. There's Alex’s cousin Luna, who is described as “fearless and hip.” However, these qualities fail to shine through as Luna has very little screen time. The other female character, Alex’s mother, similarly barely makes an appearance. There are no queer characters.

This film was based on the Mexican-American experience, so there wasn’t much regional diversity.

The accents are authentic and the language switching is believable. However, I am giving it a C because “Chupa” is a much too suggestive title for a children’s movie, which should have been flagged by the presumably bilingual cast and crew. 

There isn’t any racial diversity. There are brown and more light- skinned characters, but no Black characters to speak of. 

This film definitely draws on a few tropes — the bullying, the fact Alex doesn’t know how to speak Spanish — but it fails to do anything new with them. This makes the film feel formulaic, like it’s representation for the sake of representation rather than rewriting tropes and stereotypes on our own terms.

It was fine! The CGI monster could have been cuter or more charming. The weaving of storylines was clumsy and incomplete. But watching this with the whole fam could definitely be a fun night in.