Recreating the brilliant expressionism of Fritz Lang’s original M from 1933, Román Viñoly Barreto’s El vampiro negro (US: The Black Vampire) retains Lang’s story but emphasizes the victims’ mothers, particularly club performer Amalia (Olga Zubarry), in what some consider a feminist spin. With an uncanny resemblance to Peter Lorre, who played the killer in the original version, Nathán Pinzón stars as “The Professor,” who copes with his insecurity around women by kidnapping and murdering little girls. The Professor whistles the same tune from 1933 and is similarly trapped underground by an enraged mob by the end (a thrilling scene of sensory overload). Compared to the American remake of Lang’s German classic (Joseph Losey’s 1951 M), Barreto’s film is visually extravagant, opening with fog and X-ray images, painting every nighttime street and filthy sewer with shimmering rays of light, slow panning across a smoke-filled nightclub and reflecting light off the menacing presence of the shiny, wrought-iron elevators.