Chingo Bling: They Can't Deport Us All (2017)

The horror franchise that had moviegoers watching behind their fingers but on the edge of their seats. The Conjuring quartet released its final installment this year, and it did not disappoint.

A pop star at Radio City Music Hall gets the opportunity to change herself to save her music career.

Set against the backdrop of the Jim Crow era, the film offers layered representation.

These confines won’t really encourage you to read the film as a metaphor for the nerve-inducing experience we’ve all been through over the last year, however — and in the interest of maintaining your dignity, you probably shouldn’t. While the sociopolitical commentary may have worked for the similarly-themed Buried (2010), in which we find Ryan Reynolds on his own buried alive in the Middle East, but this futuristic take on the premise is best left as a piece of distracting entertainment. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is no less suffocating, literally and dramatically.

How powerful can a story be when it is stripped to the bare essentials of just a room, a handful of people and raw human voice?