WARNING: The following contains spoilers for The Old Ways, now streaming on Netflix.
Netflix's The Old Ways focuses on Mexican-American reporter Cristina Lopez (Brigitte Kali Canales) as she returns to her hometown of Veracruz for a story on local culture. Unfortunately, her journey takes a dark turn as she wakes up, kidnapped by two locals who claim she's possessed. While Cristina initially thinks they're deluded, it turns out they're right, so let's discuss why she's been cursed and who exactly is Postehki, the demon within her.
The movie begins with the exorcism of a young mother but it seems to be botched as her young daughter watches, screaming and crying. The girl's taken away, but the mom scrapes her, leaving a gruesome mark. It's the same place Cristina's shackled in now where an old lady, Luz, has been performing traditional Nahuatl rituals. She's an expert shaman, and along with her son, Javi, they're trying to send the demon to Hell.
Cristina's cousin, Miranda, arrives, confirming she found Cristina's body and helped the mother-son duo bring her back from the ruins she was exploring known as "La Boca." Miranda admits she shouldn't have been at the caves as many demons reside there, so the only way out is for Luz, aka the bruja/witch, to use "the old ways." Still, as much as Luz looks into Cristina's eyes, supposedly seeing the entity, Cristina is unsure what's real and what isn't.
We see several stages of the exorcism to get the mysterious entity to show itself, but Cristina, who has a drug addiction and secretly uses heroin at night in the prison, thinks she's losing her grip on reality. It gets worse as Luz pulls monstrous teeth out of her stomach by phasing her hand through her skin in a "psychic surgery." But Cristina's experienced issues with withdrawal in the past too so she feels like this isn't supernatural, but that the family's drugging her goat's milk and gaslighting her.
However, after she uses her syringe to attack Javi and flee the house, she's blocked by a salt line and an invisible barrier. It's at this point, coupled with nightmares and seeing a mysterious young kid outside her hut, she starts to think the demon is real. Miranda's revelation of how Cristina cut them off after going into foster care ties into the depression Cristina reads of from Luz's tomes, discerning her demon is indeed Postehki, "the death god of broken things."
It all comes together when Cristina begins coddling a little doll in captivity. Flashbacks show this was the doll the girl dropped at the beginning of the movie, confirming it was Cristina's mom who died in the exorcism. They further show she didn't slip and fall in the ruins -- she returned to kill herself at La Boca, angry and depressed about the thought that medicine could have saved her mom instead of arcane rituals. Miranda found her body and got Luz to prep Cristina as her bloody scrapes from her mom forged a blood connection which the demon never forgot.
This seeded pain in her soul, which has been festering since. Postehki loves "broken souls" and now wants her "consumed." Reconciling all this, Cristina finally accepts Miranda didn't betray her; she was trying to help her cousin as the demon lured her in to be the perfect vessel.
See Postehki possess Cristina in The Old Ways, now streaming on Netflix.
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