On the Very Haunting Set of ‘Flowers Para Los Muertos’

I arrive a few minutes early for a strictly 30-minute lunch break that wouldn’t start until 5 p.m. I hesitate before ringing the doorbell, which would have interrupted a scene being filmed in the entryway. So after that, I would be extra cautious.

I’d been to Casita Galore many times before — it’s one of the more flamboyant addresses in Centro, and the parties there are memorable. But this is different. The house next door appears to be filled with costume racks. The theater room had become a hair-and-makeup studio. Craft services had taken over the kitchen, and lights were being moved back and forth by crew members I kept nearly bumping into. Cables were tripping hazards. I struggle to stay out of the way.

The occasion is Flowers Para Los Muertos, a bilingual black comedy/thriller that P David Ebersole and Todd Hughes — the married filmmaking team who live at Casita Galore — were wrapping up in January. It is their first narrative feature in more than a decade, and the haunted house at the center of the story is, in fact, their own home.

“We decided to make the ex-husband gay so we didn’t have to redecorate the house,” Ebersole says. I note that making it straight would have busted the film budget. Everyone in the room seemed to agree.

Scouting the city

The couple conceived the story on a road trip to Campeche. By the time they got back to Mérida, they had the outline. They spent August writing every day, treating the month as a retreat — and building the script around specific locations they had already scouted around the city.

Parque de las Américas anchors several scenes, including one where leads Amy Hill and Yolonda Ross have lunch on the park’s iconic bandshell. A historic bar in the Santiago neighborhood was transformed into an upscale nightclub. A private library became the real estate office of Raven Johnson, the film’s antagonist. A cemetery scene was in negotiation for permits with Mérida’s Director of Tourism, who shortened his own vacation to help service the production.

“The first time we came to Mérida, I was like, my god, I want to make a movie here,” Hughes says. “These locations are just extraordinary — and they’re not going to last forever.”

The film is shot in CinemaScope — an unusually wide format for a psychological thriller — specifically to show off the city’s scale. “We’ve been really working in a lot of wide shots,” Ebersole says, “so you can see these big, huge vistas.” Unlike recent productions such as Pedro Pan, whichused Mérida to stand in for 1960s Havana, Flowers Para Los Muertos presents the city as itself. Mérida plays Mérida.

The cast

Amy Hill, who has over 200 film and television credits — including Lilo & Stitch, 50 First Dates, and a long run on Magnum P.I. — plays Aviva Lake, a New York photographer who unexpectedly inherits a house in Mexico. Yolonda Ross, best known as Jada Washington on Showtime’s The Chi and who appeared opposite Liam Neeson in the 2024 thriller Absolution, plays Raven Johnson, the real estate agent who tries to gaslight Aviva into believing the house is haunted in order to force a quick sale. The house turns out to actually be haunted.

The supporting cast is drawn largely from Mérida — first-time actors Miguel Angel Loret and Andrea Arenas among them. Ross’s character is also a retired pop star with one hit to her name. Hughes got a wish fulfilled on set: “One of my dreams was that Yolonda sang a song.”

The tone

Ebersole and Hughes describe Flowers Para Los Muertos as a homage to Val Lewton, the producer behind 1940s psychological thrillers such as Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie — films famous for letting shadows and suggestion do the scary work rather than outright gore. That sensibility is crossed with the heightened drama of Mexican telenovelas, a form the directors know well: Ebersole directed and Hughes wrote Fox Television’s American telenovela adaptations, Desire and Wicked Wicked Games, in 2006 and 2007.

“It’s really a psychological thriller,” Hughes says, “but shot in rich, beautiful, dark, deep colors.” Ebersole puts it more bluntly: “There’s a lot of crazy, weird drama. People die, and there’s ghosts.”

The crew

Much of the core crew reunites long-term collaborators. Producer and production designer Candi Guterres (The Brothers Garcia) worked with Ebersole on HBO’s Stranger Inside in 2001, as did Ross and costume designer Frank Helmer (Cobra Kai, Drop Dead Diva). Cinematographer Mark Putnam brings an equally deep history with the team — he shot Ebersole’s first feature, Straight Right, and later served as cinematographer on the Ebersole Hughes documentaries House of Cardin, My Name Is Lopez, and David’s Friend. The project is an international co-production between The Ebersole Hughes Company, Candivision, and the Yucatecan production entity Maquina.

No distributor or release date has been announced.

Flowers Para Los Muertos — Fast Facts

• Directors/writers: P David Ebersole and Todd Hughes
• Stars: Amy Hill, Yolonda Ross
• Genre: Bilingual black comedy/psychological thriller
• Languages: Spanish and English
• Format: CinemaScope, color
• Production: The Ebersole Hughes Company, Candivision, Maquina
• Filmed: Mérida, Yucatán, January 2026
• Release date: Pending