Identifying Features (2020)

Here’s a tense and effective slow-burn thriller with its point of view south of the US-Mexico border. Magdalena’s only son, not even 18, has left their farm for work he has heard of in Arizona. But he never even makes it to the border, the friend he was traveling with has been found dead, and there is no further word. Magdalena (Mercedes Hernández) decides to travel north to find out what she can, embarking on a journey that takes us all on a trip. The closer she gets to finding out what happened to her son the more people keep telling her to go home and forget it. She comes to understand that the bus he and his friend were traveling on was hijacked. The feeling you get is that such incidents may not be common but they’re not unknown. Passengers are robbed of all they have, brutalized, often killed. It appeared obvious to me anyway that her son was gone and Magdalena should take the advice of all the people telling her to go home. Yet she perseveres. She learns of a man who might have knowledge of her son, but he lives in a distant village in a territory that is inexplicably dangerous. Bandits seem to be taking it over. Along the way she meets a young man, Miguel (David Illescas), who has been recently deported after five years in the US. He is returning to his home and mother and so confident that nothing has changed there that he invites Magdalena to stay with them and assures her his mother will get along with her. There’s good mother-son chemistry between these two. But things have changed, as recently as days or weeks. Miguel’s mother is nowhere to be found and all their livestock has been slaughtered. We are plainly on a downward spiral and Identifying Features is not pretending to be anything else. The ending has something of a false note. People may see it as more or less a problem. It is there to be discovered. I was a little disappointed by it but only because everything to that point was so good. Director and cowriter Fernanda Valadez has a sure hand and a keen eye. Hernández and Illescas are great. Identifying Features is one that sticks with you.