Genre Mystery

Mangroves (2018)

Item: Mangroves
Rating: 3.0
Author: Ross McLaren

★★★ — Mangroves (2018)

Mangroves is a 2018 short mystery film from Trinidad and Tobago, running to just fifteen minutes. It follows a man who ventures into the Trinidadian mangroves in pursuit of something he cannot quite explain, only to find himself drawn into a supernatural world and scrambling to get out before nightfall closes in around him. Short-form genre filmmaking from the Caribbean is still a relatively rare sight in international film culture, which makes the film a modest but genuine curiosity: it is rooted in a very specific regional folklore tradition, and it wears that rootedness without apology. For a companion piece in Trinidadian cinema, see also She Paradise, which comes from the same national film culture a couple of years later.

The film marks a notable triple effort from writer-director Teneille Newallo, who also appears in front of the camera as one of the principal cast. That kind of triple-hatting is a demanding undertaking in any production, let alone one working on the constraints typical of short independent genre filmmaking. The cast alongside Newallo includes Stephen Hadeed Jr., Anand Lawkaran, Joshua Dowlth, and Adrianne Eligon. No studio is credited, which places Mangroves firmly in the tradition of independent, community-rooted production: the sort of filmmaking that tends to be driven by creative necessity and a genuine investment in the story being told, rather than by commercial calculation.

Cinematographer Oliver Milne and editor Joel Burke are the key craft collaborators here, and the technical choices they make are worth noting before getting into the substance of the film. Milne's work leans heavily on the natural environment: the mangroves themselves, with their dense root systems, low light filtering through canopy, and the particular quality of dusk-light on brackish water, are treated as active visual participants rather than mere location dressing. There is a texture to the imagery that tends to characterise low-budget genre filmmaking done with genuine attention, where the camera has to find drama in what is physically present rather than what can be constructed or lit artificially. Burke's editing supports this, keeping the fifteen-minute runtime tight without sacrificing the atmospheric slow-build that the premise demands. The score, though the composer is uncredited, works alongside the natural soundscape of the location rather than against it, letting the environment carry much of the tension.

What struck me first is that this is actually the second Soucouyant film I've encountered on this tour, which I genuinely didn't see coming. Finding the same piece of regional folklore popping up twice across a project designed to cover the whole world is a strange and oddly satisfying coincidence. It says something about how deeply rooted the Soucouyant is in Caribbean culture that filmmakers keep returning to it. If you're drawn to that kind of folk horror, I had a similarly good time with The Witch (2015), which leans hard into the mythology of its own particular corner of the world.

The film is well made for what it is. There's a confidence to it that you don't always get with short-form genre work, where things can feel rushed or underbaked. Here, the atmosphere is handled with care. The mangroves of the title aren't just a backdrop. They feel present, almost oppressive, and the filmmakers get real mileage out of the setting without needing a blockbuster budget to do it.

The thing that sticks with me most, though, is the twist at the end. I won't say anything more than that, because the whole point is that it lands when you're not expecting it. But it reframes enough of what came before to make you want to sit with the film for a moment after the credits roll. That's not a small achievement in a short runtime. Getting an audience to feel that kind of retroactive shift takes genuine craft in the writing.

My only real hesitation is that, as a short, it naturally leaves you wanting a bit more room to breathe. Some of the ideas feel like they could have been expanded, and the characters don't quite get the space they'd need to become fully fleshed out. That's not necessarily a criticism of the film so much as a limitation of the format. Within what it is, it does its job well.

Three stars. A solid, atmospheric piece of Trinidadian folklore horror with a clever ending. If you've got a spare half hour and any appetite for folk horror or world cinema, it's well worth your time. I'm glad my World Movie Tour keeps throwing up little surprises like this one.

What I find myself coming back to is just how much Mangroves manages to pack into its quarter-hour, particularly when you consider how many short genre films struggle to land any single idea with real conviction. The folk horror space is genuinely rich territory for this kind of storytelling, and if you have any appetite for that strand of filmmaking, I also reviewed Saint Maud and Pontypool, both of which use their specific cultural or geographical contexts to generate unease in a similar way. The format will always leave certain questions open and certain characters thinner than you might like. That is simply the bargain you make with a short. But as an argument for what Trinidadian genre filmmaking can do with the right source material and a filmmaker willing to commit to it, Mangroves makes its case quietly and then gets out before you have fully processed it. Which, really, is exactly what it set out to do.

Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2018 | Watched: 2025-09-13

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