Quicksand

This is your quintessential isolated survivalist thriller in the same vein as Fall, Frozen, The Shallows and the like. Unfortunately, due to a few different things, I don't think it was quite as successful as its predecessors.

Right off the bat, I noticed two things... The picture quality was quite nice and the acting was a little... sus. There were some genuine, real to life moments and interactions with everyone involved while also having some clunky, robotic ones and that aspect persisted throughout the film. I think this was mainly due to some spotty acting and a not super refined script.

As far as the play-by-play goes, I would say these films are some of the hardest to retain your viewers engagement throughout as it is often just a single setting with not all that much to explore or come up with. I think the foundation of what they had as far as action within the "predicament" was there but the pacing slowed down at points throughout and the ending began to drag.

A pretty big issue I had with this one was that there was a lack of consistency within the variables in this world. Sometimes the quicksand and its viscosity looked easy to navigate and sometimes impossible, somethings seemed to effect one person and their health more than it effected the other, at one point an object may seem too far and unattainable and suddenly with a seemingly unhelpful alteration it is now within reach.

I am not a particularly picky reviewer, and am all for letting things go for the sake of entertainment. However, small things such as these and lapses in continuity provide for a heavy does of suspension of disbelief to be enjoyed.

This was by no means an unsuccessful film or entirely unentertaining, but I definitely think it had some major issues that squandered some of the its potential and were detrimental to its success. I think this landed just below average at a 4.5 rounding down to a 4. Would recommend, but not with any fervency.

Well, who would have figured that getting stuck in quicksand would be so unfathomably boring?

When I sat down to watch this 2023 thriller from writer Matt Pitts and director Andres Beltran, I had never actually heard about the movie. But I will say that the synopsis for the movie was interesting enough. However, I scrolled through some of the reviews here on IMDb, and it wasn't all praise and admiration for the movie.

Yet, I opted to watch "Quicksand" on the account of the taste of the reviewers that I had read differed from mine. But I have to say that writer Matt Pitts put together a very bland and boring script for director Andres Beltran to bring to life on the screen.

I must admit that I never felt that the Sofia (played by Carolina Gaitan) and Josh (played by Allan Hawco) characters were ever in any real danger in the movie. And it seemed like they could just have turned around and easily pulled themselves out of the mire. It just never came off as being a dangerous situation and the wooden acting and cringeworthy dialogue just didn't help to convince me.

The movie has a very small cast ensemble, which means that there was all the more pressure laying on the few performers on the cast list. Sadly, however, they just weren't given any chance to carry the movie, because the script, the dialogue and the character gallery had the appeal of sitting down to watch grass growing. Needless to say that I wasn't familiar with the cast ensemble in "Quicksand".

I didn't stick around to finish watching the movie, because at the 56 minute marker, I was just bored to tears. And I had even dozed off once throughout the course of those 56 excrutiatingly long minutes. And believe you me, when i say that I am never returning to finish watching the rest of "Quicksand".

My rating of "Quicksand" lands on a two out of ten stars.

Sophia and Josh are a couple in the middle of a divorce traveling to Colombia for a work conference. On their free day they decide to do a hiking trip to 'El sendero la chorrera' in the Natural Reserve Park La Chorrera. They're warned about 'las arenas', a dangerous part of the trail made of quicksand and infested by poisonous snakes. But they end up being forced to cross the area and both end trapped in quicksand. With no help, a storm approaching, and snakes surrounding the place Sophia and Josh will have to push their differences aside if they want to survive.

Quicksand follows the well known formula of survival films making it predictable from the start. The story is short, simple to follow and understand without any shocking moment or plot twist. The side plot doesn't add any groundbreaking aspect to the narrative making it unnecessary. The concept of quicksand and snakes is a good and interesting one with the potential of bringing a more emotional story but it turns just decent. Both Carolina Gaitán and Allan Hawco as Sophia and Josh did as much as the direction and scrip allowed them. Portraying a couple in the middle of a divorce with a lot of resentment for each other is the most believable and part of the film. Gaitán and Hawco are able to make their hateful feeling for each other look and feel real and while this is a positive aspect for their initial situation they're supposed to have a moment of reconciliation and that feeling of love and affection never truly arrives. At the end Quicksand turns into another decent horror triller with missed opportunities and wasted potential.

I'd say this sunk fast, but even at only 86 minutes, it felt like it was four hours.

All I know about quicksand, I learned from movies and TV shows, mostly during the 70s. It's hardly ever brought up anymore. I mean, I guess if you count Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And no one really counts that.

This was just plain dumb with LARGE melodramatic chunks, unnecessary slo-mo, poorly paced, really odd choices in acting and life-threatening twists that abruptly end without conclusion. Admittedly, there were tense moments, but again, they fizzle fast and back to more Hallmark/Lifetime scenes.

A really annoying couple are breaking up since this had to keep with the standard Man v Nature Movie Tropes. After what feels like an eternity, they land right into the Title Card and if you've seen Open Water, that's how this mostly plays out. Only...this had a much different ending. A hard one to believe, but they had a budget and had to end the movie as the money ran out.

When I was a kid, I was deathly afraid of quicksand because of what I saw on the tele. I've been told, it's nothing like what you see on TV or in movies. So, I just YouTubed how to survive quicksand and...okay, I'll give this movie some realism. But, JUST A LITTLE BIT.

Kinda hard to make an entire movie based on Quicksand and yet, they've done more with less. Open Water and 127 Hours just to name a couple. I WANTED to like this more, especially with my phobia. Nope.

I'm never ever going to the jungle; I vow and I'm gonna let that sink in.

***

Final Thoughts: Funny, the quicksand scene I remember most from any media was The Incredibly Hulk when David got stuck and was sinking until a blind chick tried to save him. Not before he freaked/hulked out, naturally. It's been an eternity since I saw that clip, but I suspect Hulk's anger would've made him sink even faster. Spoiler, he lives. Imagine if THAT'S what ultimately brought the Hulk down. So to speak.

Let's put aside the absurdity of confronting someone breaking into your vehicle in the middle of the woods. Then also put aside the absurdity of your fight or flight instincts kicking in, but they tell you to take Flight after you've already gained the upper hand through Fight. Then put aside the ridiculousness of a thief wildly shooting into the woods because....if you can't see the person you're trying to shoot, the trees will suffice? The foundation for this movie is ridiculous is what I'm getting at.

The internet has been telling us for the last decade that it's actually near impossible to get fully submerged or even die in quicksand if you're a human being with intelligence greater than a 6 year old. This movie asks the question "what's the internet?"