TLACATLI (MIRROR)
2025BloodBat2m 37sUSA
World Premiere
Tlacatli (Mirror) is a compact exercise in Twilight Zone unease, drawing on Aztec mythology to tell a story of doubling and reflection. Conceived, written, shot, and cut over a single convention weekend and filmed entirely on a phone, the short follows an ordinary man toward an encounter with something wearing his own face. Writer-director Matthew Torres stages its climax as a single unbroken take, letting dread accumulate in real time rather than in the cut. Made by a two-person crew, Torres and producer Bella Torres, it is a study in how much menace can be conjured from almost nothing: one location, one performer, and a reflection that refuses to behave.
About the Film
Tlacatli (Mirror) belongs to a lineage of horror that finds its terror in the familiar turned strange. Drawing on Aztec mythology and the moral machinery of a Twilight Zone episode, the short concerns a man and the double that regards him from the other side of a reflection. Its title pairs a word rooted in older belief with a single English gloss, Mirror, and the film honors both: this is a story about seeing yourself, and about what looks back.
The production is as spare as the premise. Written, directed, and edited by Matthew Torres and produced by his collaborator and wife, Bella Torres, the film was conceived, shot, and completed across a single convention weekend and captured entirely on a phone. Its ambitions are staged rather than budgeted. The climax unfolds in one continuous take, a choreography of performer and camera that lets the dread build without the relief of a cut, while the surrounding world, ordinary and unbothered, only sharpens the sense that something is wrong.
Made in forty-eight hours for the BloodBat Film Competition and recognized with the festival's Most Creative Award, Tlacatli (Mirror) is finally a film about economy: how much unease two people can wring from one idea, one location, and a camera small enough to fit in a pocket.
Where to watch
Trailer
Credits
- Director
- Matt Torres(BloodBat team)
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