The Old Ways (2020)

With quite literally zero lead-up, we're dropped straight into the middle of a kidnapping situation. A young American journalist is held in a Mexican shed, tries out some spanish, but ultimately fails to figure out why she is there.

A one-eyed witchdoctor abuela in cool makeup comes in and tells her she has demons.

Her captors force her to drink a lot of goat milk. Demons hate this one trick. Though, later evidence would suggest that they don't actually care.

Her cousin is there, too, apparently involved in the kidnapping. The journalist is only mildly bothered by this revelation. A bunch of heroin-fueled flashbacks inform us that the journalist is originally from here, but left at a very young age when her mom got demons.

If you've ever seen a demonic possession/exorcism film, you know the drill. She's tied and chained and nailed to surfaces while gross objects are variously inserted into or extracted out of her. Sometimes she's friendly, sometimes she stabs people.

Instead of boring old catholic imagery, though, we get cool witchdoctor imagery.

La abuela fights a sandstorm and they both lose, which is the climax of the film. There are CGI sparkles to celebrate.

The journalist didn't realize it was the climax, so the film just keeps going and they pretty much do the same exorcism cycle a second time, albeit on an accelerated schedule.

A quetzal hangs around, disinterested in the whole thing.

Surprising nobody, the journalist decides to stop being a junky L.A. journalist and become a witchdoctor instead. She has a meeting with her boss to inform him of her career change, and that he has demons.