Summary
I’m Not Afraid is both an engaging mystery and a powerful coming-of-age tale, exploring how poverty and desperation can warp a place and its people in unfathomable ways.
The hook of I’m Not Afraid, Netflix’s Spanish-language adaptation of Niccolò Ammaniti’s 2003 novel I’m Not Scared, is a mystery. In the woods surrounding his rural village in Mexico, ten-year-old Miguel (Aldo Emiliano Navarro) discovers something in a hole in the ground that radically contorts his worldview – a young boy named Felipe (Yago Andreu), chained up as a captive by someone he calls the “Worm Man”.
All kinds of dramatic questions abound. Who’s responsible for taking Felipe? Can Miguel get him free? But the real value of this six-episode miniseries isn’t in the answers to these questions but in what they say about Miguel, his friends, and his family, all of whom are eking out a living in poverty made even more stifling by a harvest-destroying plague that has left Miguel’s parents, Pino (Luis Alberti) and Teresa (Fátima Molina), in ruins.
From the perspective of Miguel, his younger sister María (Regina Arroyo), and their cousin Chuy (Bruno Strauss), among others, we see the most wide-eyed and innocent view of financial and social hardship that gradually morphs into the complete erosion of the trust and safety these kids thought they could cling to. While they begin simply as children, enjoying games of soccer against the timely backdrop of the 1986 FIFA World Cup, they have no choice but to develop real consciences as they’re put through the wringer by the decisions of the adults around them.
Early on, this takes a folkloric contour. Miguel is introduced to a local legend about a witch by Felix (Cosmo Gonzalez), the frightening older brother of neighborhood bully Calavera (Mauro Guzmán), so when Chuy and his parents, Rosalío (Fernando Cuautl) and Margarita (Leidi Gutiérrez), abruptly disappear, Miguel begins to worry that evil is afoot. He’s right, of course, but it takes a much more distressingly human form than he expected.
Miguel’s loss of innocence is the driving force behind I’m Not Afraid, and it’s incredibly authentic and engaging in its depiction. The details are rich, with the World Cup providing not only a grounding in the time period but a shared passion for Miguel and Felipe, and eventually a form of sacrifice as Miguel begins to give up scarce television time to look after the boy that all the local adults seem too busy and harangued to concern themselves with. But as Miguel gradually scratches at the surface of Felipe’s plight, he exposes a rot that he wasn’t expecting, and at the show’s midpoint, its revelations morph it from a mystery about local legends to a horror story about desperation and mistrust.
To say more would be telling, though it’s fair to say that the plot’s revelations, at least beyond those that emerge in Episode 3, aren’t really the point. The show’s nonlinear construction helps to build that mystery for a while, but it’s more a tool of juxtaposition, allowing the same environment in a period of relative abundance to contrast with the version that emerges under intense lack. Likewise, the people change. Those who were once reliable, joyful figures become sinister and desperate over time, taking on new contours as circumstances change. Miguel’s worldview expands to take in the decline, as he begins to understand more about not just what the world is hiding but how fragile childhood innocence can be. There’s no putting the genie back in the lamp.
A good mystery is often enough for a limited series. That I’m Not Afraid has one is good news, but it’s wildly underselling the show’s appeal to describe it exclusively in those terms. This is a rich, layered coming-of-age story with horror at its core and real ideas about social inequity on its mind. Those coming for a compelling binge-watch will find one, but unlike most shows designed to be gobbled down in one sitting, this one will likely stay with you long after the credits roll.
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