Depth of field

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/08/2023 (1102 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Until the 1950s, most movie magic enthralling audiences on the silver screen was captured on film using actual silver. The chemical created stunningly luminous images.

But there was a good chance that beautiful movie would also kill you. Silver nitrate is highly flammable and sparked deadly theatre fires.

The film buffs at the heart of Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s ninth novel can’t resist the allure of the explosive silver nitrate when they get a chance to shoot the final scenes of a long-lost cult horror movie.

Silver Nitrate is, on the surface, a slow-burn horror story: two best friends in 1990s Mexico City befriend a washed-up director who promises all their dreams will come true if they help him finish his film and break the curse that’s ruined his life.

The catch? A Nazi occultist wrote the screenplay and believed silver nitrate was “a perfect medium for sealing spells.” His murder halted production and the silver nitrate reels disappeared for decades. But the director hopes his struggling new friends can reignite the magic.

Montserrat is a talented sound mixer who can’t break through the sexist boys’ club of the Mexican film world. Tristán is a disgraced former soap opera star haunted by scandal. As kids they bonded as outsiders who loved B movies: “When they watched horror movies, it was the sight of the monster, the Other, that terrified Tristán and the idea of becoming the hero that seduced him. Montserrat saw herself in the faces of monsters and did not wince.”

They don’t really believe the old director when he talks about curses, but Montserrat can’t resist the chance to work with one of her cinematic idols, in a romanticized film medium long since replaced with analog.

But instead of breaking curses, the trio triggers an explosion of old dark magic and demonic forces imbued in the silver nitrate. In her battle to conquer the dark magic, Montserrat digs deep into the very real historical connection between Nazi occultism, white supremacy and eugenics.

Moreno-Garcia is an academic expert on the topic. She wrote her master’s thesis at the University of British Columbia on “women and eugenic thought in the work of H.P. Lovecraft,” one the most influential horror writers of all time. And also one of the most racist.

In Silver Nitrate, her dismantling of the colonialism and white supremacy woven through Mexican history is anything but academic. There is an almost tangible joy in the way Montserrat and Tristán, both dark-skinned, confront the pervasive Eurocentric racism empowering lighter-skinned Mexicans and the white supremist belief that ancient Aryans, or even aliens, must have been behind the architectural and engineering feats of the Aztecs and Mayans.

Moreno-Garcia may be most well-known for her 2020 novel Mexican Gothic, an international bestseller and CBC Canada Reads contender. But the Mexican-Canadian author, editor and publisher is building an impressive and lengthy body of horror novels, short stories and essays that upends and flips the genre with deep explorations of the impact of colonialism, particularly on women of colour.

Silver Nitrate explores some dark and heavy themes, but it is also at times a fun (and funny) nostalgic celebration of movie magic: “That’s why he loved movies. They were an endless loop. Magic, trapped forever and forever spinning through a projector. Magic fixed in time and space with silver.”

Silver Nitrate is packed with references to both famous and obscure historical figures in cinema and occultism. You don’t need to know who any of them are to enjoy the story, but you can also dive in and get lost down fascinating rabbit holes.

Joanne Kelly is journalism instructor at Red River College Polytechnic and talks books on the CBC Weekend Morning Show.