La región salvaje

The Untamed wasn't terrible. It's a science-fantasy or space opera story: an alien falls to Earth and radiates sexual satisfaction, affecting man, woman, and beast. I generally like this type of story, and it was well acted for the most part, with good production values.

But the plot seemed to drag quite often. I think the reason is, we don't get much communication from the women or the man most directly affected: How is penetration of multiple orifices by this non-verbal, non-human, definitely not cuddly beast superior to or substantially different from penetration (presumably of multiple orifices) by those folks' not-very-verbal, not very communicative, not-sticking-around-to-cuddle human partners? This is not at all clear. Neither is it clear how some people were injured, nor why, knowing the risks, some people continued to rendezvous with the alien.

Normally we would say, "Show, don't tell." But doing that would have turned the film into pure porn. Okay, why not tell us, using the usual stratagem of one character sharing their experience and their feelings with another character, so we get to overhear it? We see how the situation creates peripheral, real-word problems for the characters, but that just wasn't enough - for me - to build empathy. It left me cold, and the rather cavalier, nonchalant attitude expressed in the final scenes did nothing to build any redeeming affection for the characters.

It's okay, but the writers and director let us down, because it could have been a lot better.

Be warned that this Mexican horror film has some graphic nudity and alien/human sexuality. This is not a giveaway as the opening scene makes quite clear where this is headed. A young woman, Veronica, is in a room in a moment of what seems to be self induced pleasure, when, something not of this earth exits her most private of parts. We are off to the races. Veronica is injured during the encounter and meets a nurse at the hospital who befriends her. His sister Alejandra is in an abusive marriage and has two kids. Veronica informs Ale of meeting someone(ha ha, E.T.) who has changed her life for the better. It seems that she has become a matchmaker for the slithering creature from outer space. What follows is some extremely unpleasant human/alien couplings not for those with weak stomachs. In the end I was entertained by this Mexican thriller.

Okay, let's get one thing out of the way; the majority of this film is a character study/family drama. There are long stretches of the movie where the characters just go about their daily lives, and although it does not detract from the overall package, it does offer a better label of the films genre. Yes, there are sci-fi elements, but at its core, it is a movie about a woman's crumbling marriage, and how she deals with it.

With that said, this movie offers some excellent acting, some truly amazing and breath taking cinematography, and a great (yet subdued) soundtrack. The director also did an amazing job in framing each shot, and the movie just looks gorgeous. Hollywood could certainly learn a thing or two from these types of directors that focus on artistry over budget.

The star of the show, the Thing in the shed, was one of the freakiest things I have ever seen in any movie. It moved with purpose and grace, and the face had such a deadly intelligence as to suggest that it was smarter that the beings it was indulging. Every time it showed up on screen, I got goose bumps. Like watching the creature from The Thing mate with an Octopus. Weird, fantastical, and completely convincing. How something so genuinely creepy was created on such a small budget, I will never understand.

Overall, this is an art house drama about a woman's quiet struggles with a deteriorating marriage. Yes, there are some horrific scenes, some violence, some sex and of course, the Sci-Fi elements. But in the end, its a tale of how one woman sought solace from a failed marriage from something that was beyond her control. Highly recommended, but only if you are patient and have an appreciation of film as an art form.

This film is about finding pleasure. The five main characters are husband, wife, brother, girl and alien. There are lies, sex, orgasmic encounters and jealousy. Good setup for a strange sci-fi drama.

This isn't a bad film. It is slowly paced but my curiosity helped it hold my attention. I sometimes find it hard for me to gauge foreign actors but I thought the acting was ok. There's an ominous feel to this and I guess that also helped in holding my attention. It wasn't anything I would classify as horror going on. It felt much more like weirdness. My biggest issue is that you never really get an understanding of everything was going on. I wanted to know why people were hurt or dying and I never got an answer. Things just didn't completely add up by the end of the film so I had to take some points away for that. With such a slow pace there was a great building of suspense but it failed to satisfy. If you can handle the pace and the unanswered questions, this is an ok movie.

"Phallocentric" fiction comes to mind when this bizarre Mexican horror film, The Untamed, opens with Veronica (Ruth Ramos) masturbating or not; in a short while Ale (Simone Bucio) has a snake-like creature leaving her vagina. Well, this is like no other alien you have ever seen, and its power to make sexually crazy more than one object of its affection propels a little sci-fi into Freudland and for a long time into the audience's imagination, not soon to leave.

Mexican auteur Amat Escalante has crafted an odd drama about frustrated young adults, one of whom, Angel (Jesus Meza), is having an affair with Ale's brother. Angel, of course, acts like a macho homophobe when he isn't either. He's a coward tormented by his closeted world.

But have no fear, for your tentacled alien, housed in the dark woods by a troubled couple, can bring pleasure and destruction when the situation suits. Because this giant phallus is addictive, the victims come back for more until it all isn't safe anymore.

If you long for philosophical ruminations, such as Rod Serling might give at the end of a Twilight Zone segment, forget it. So deeply is the passion of the players buried in their primitive sexual desires, we enter a spiritual realm that despite the octopus-like alien is a figurative representation of repression and liberation and not easily explained.

After all, the rapture of the enraptured is depicted as if a python had coiled its victim in readiness for a very big feast. As in life itself, the sway of sexuality can be underestimated but never avoided. The Untamed proves in a figurative way what we all knew from the nuns, namely, sex is a killer.