Synopsis
Mexico City, 1968: In her deathbed, an old lady named Silvia Coronel confesses to a priest some of the strange events that she experienced during her younger years…
CUT TO:
Puebla, 1913: Fifteen years old Silvia is left by his father in the Hacienda Sacramento, once a school for young ladies which now has become a shelter where the landowners of the region hide their teenage daughters due to the violent outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. At the refuge, governed with heavy-hand by Mrs. Inés Keller -a Spanish widow-, and her niece Carmen Solano –a Hispanic young woman of sour character-, Silvia suffers constant abuses by a group of interns. After she has been thrown to the bottom of a well, Silvia escapes from the Hacienda, but in a nearby field full of lemon balms (melisas), she encounters a young dying girl and returns to the hideaway with her. In a matter of days, the unknown girl -baptized by the interns as Melisa- recovers miraculously, but no one is aware that, in fact, she is a vampire which now feeds herself with the blood of the most defenseless beings. Eventually, Silvia and Melisa develop a very special friendship, one that will be disrupted when a group of bandits, dropouts from the revolutionary war burst, break into the Hacienda with dark purposes, unleashing an explosive bloodbath.