10 More Perfect Horror Movies You've Never Heard Of

Mexican indie horror Tigers Are Not Afraid is the place where City of God meets Pan's Labyrinth, where the brutalities of reality manifest surrounded by supernatural horrors, and it never shies away from an opportunity to plunge us into the worst of a society where human trafficking, bloody murder and orphaned children are commonplace.

Estrella (Paolo Lara), a pre-teen with a relatively normal life, is wrenched into orphan-hood when the local drug cartel kidnaps her mother. Armed with three pieces of wish-granting chalk, and stalked by the spectre of her mother and many other dead innocents, she joins up with Shine's (Juan Ramón López) gang of homeless orphans, and they wage a small and surprisingly effective war on the cartel.

Tigers Are Not Afraid's craft and storytelling genius far outstrip its financial means (budgeted somewhere in the region of £1 million) and, while the CG isn't as flashy as its big-budget contemporaries, it blends it with prosthetics and practical effects to bring all manner of street and supernatural horrors to life.

The real genius of the film, however, is how it uses its horror not as a means to deflect from the real terrors faced by its child protagonists, but as a fundamental component of its narrative thrust, viscerally rendering the very real violence of such cities stricken by the Mexican Drug War.