'Chupa' Director Jonás Cuarón Discusses 'Reversing' Chupacabra Lore in Netflix Movie, Reveals 'Amblin-Esque' Easter Eggs (Exclusive)
Netflix's newest movie is Chupa, a family-friendly film about a young boy named Alex and his family in Mexico who go on a magical adventure to save a mythical chupacabra cub from a scientist who wants to experiment on it. The movie is directed by Jonás Cuarón, whose previous credits include acclaimed movies such as Gravity (2013) — which he wrote with his father, Alfonso Cuarón — and Desierto (2015). In an exclusive conversation with Cuarón, the director discussed the movie "reversing" longstanding chupacabra lore, and also revealed that it hides a number of "Amblin-esque" easter eggs.
Chupa was co-written by Cuarón, along with Sean Kennedy Moore, Joe Barnathan, and Marcus Rinehart, from a story the group crafted with Brendan Bellomo. When asked what drew him into the project, Cuarón explained, "Well, to be honest, this is a movie I made for my kids. I have two kids and I spent most of the pandemic watching movies with them and just also, I keep watching movies with them and a lot of the films we watch are movies that I grew up with, like E.T., Jurassic Park, Gremlins... So I suddenly became very excited to be able to make a movie like that for my kids."
He continued, "When the project came in and I realized that it had that DNA, it told the story of a kid with a magical creature, but it did it with the chupacabras, I became even more excited because I grew up in Mexico in the nineties, so I was well aware of the myth and as a kid I heard about it all over the news. I was very excited about it. I realized that this project would allow me to do a big fantastical movie for kids, but that would portray the context of where I grew up in. That was important to me."
Perhaps the most groundbreaking element of Chupa is the way that it wakes the traditional concept of the chupacabra: a vicious lizard-like creature with a taste for blood. The movie reimagines them as elusive animals who are far more cuddly than monstrous. "I always thought the reversal and the concept of grabbing a creature that since its origins was always treated as a horror movie type of creature and turning it into a creature that first of all is a cub, he's a baby," Cuarón said of the new perspective on chupacabra. "It's a movie that really plays up in the relationship between a boy and an animal. And so a lot in the design, I really wanted to play with those animals that I know kids really connect with. I find those relationships so magical whenever I see my kids playing with my dogs, it's so magical. They talk without talking."
Cuarón went on to reveal that the connection between Chupa and young actor Evan Whitten — who plays Alex — was so important to capture as organically as possible, that he found a clever way to keep it alive on set. "To me, that's so beautiful to the point that even when we filmed the movie, I made sure that Evan, the kid that plays Alex, always had a dog to interact with whenever he's acting with Chupa," the filmmaker shared. "There was a dog on set. Harper, [she] was incredibly cute and really well-behaved, and that's truly where the relationship of Evan and Chupa got built. And also later when we started animating the creature, I really based a lot of the performance on the creature and a lot of animals that I know kids really react well to."
Chupa is a movie for all ages, and this is evident in how much it feels like a classic family movie from the late '80s or early '90s. Cuarón says this was fully intentional, and that the movie is "filled with Easter eggs from all those Amblin-esque" films such as E.T. and Jurassic Park. "There's a lot of E.T. Easter eggs throughout the movie," he confessed, then adding that he went back and rewatched "all of those early Spielberg kids movies because" you can never watch them "too many times."
Citing the film's antagonist, played by Christian Slater, Cuarón explained, "Definitely in building Quinn, there was a lot of Sam Neil in Jurassic Park. I think I'm really interested in the fact of having a character that is an antagonist that is chasing after your monster, but that he has a purpose. He's not just there to trap a monster. He has a scientific reason to do it. Even in E.T., the man with the kids that is going after Elliot, once you get to talk to him he's like a kid that's... been fascinated with aliens and he has a chance he's going to take it."
He then added, "So, in building Quinn, we really wanted to give it all that dimensionality that those great antagonists have... I think Quinn's not a bad guy. He actually has a purpose, a good purpose to capturing this creature just we love Chupa and we don't want him to do it."
Finally, we asked Cuarón about the side plot in Chupa, wherein actor Demián Bichir plays an aging Luchador. This is something the director was very excited to explore, and it comes ahead of his forthcoming Marvel movie El Muerto, which will star music star-turned-actor Bad Bunny as a wrestler with superhuman strength. "I love Lucha Libra as a Mexican, you know, grow up with Lucha Libra. I was a huge Lucha Libra fan because it's such a beautifully acrobatic sport. It's really, it's a form of martial arts, but insane that we've never seen before."
He went on to add, "It's also a very narrative sport... Each Lucha Libra has its own mask, and each mask has its own narrative, and there's a narrative of characters against characters. So to me, when we were redraft reworking on the script and I wanted to bring in this character of a grandfather who brings in the stories to the kid, Lucha Libra became a really fun element because I knew I was going to be able to play with it a lot." Chupa is now streaming, only on Netflix.