The Untamed (La región salvaje) [Sub: Eng]

[Amat Escalante's] film may lack the subtlety of Val Lewton's famously allusive RKO chillers, but there's the same sense that the shadowy rooms braved by the characters are no less than the human psyche itself.

An explicit and excoriating story of eros unmoored and unmooring - the devastating power of sexual pleasure when it's stripped of both function and meaning.

Escalante draws remarkable performances out of his cast of mostly newcomers in this film about the consequences of pleasure and the many meanings of flesh; where animal intelligence fills the void left by emotional disconnect.

The unsure approach to rich material (based on a story about a newspaper's homophobic coverage of a drowned man) mixes the sexy and grotesque - and cancels each other's good parts out.

...a fantastical premise collides with Escalante's solemn realism, making for a quiet, unforgettable mash-up, inspired by director Andrzej Zulawski's Possession.

A low-key trippy sci-fi movie about booty calls with an unwieldy space squid, but I wish I could say it was much more than that.

Braver and broader-minded punters who can handle its head-scratching aspects and wild raunchiness should find much to enjoy. Others, however, might be seriously alienated.

Escalante's dogged literal-mindedness makes this an incomplete Zulawski homage at best, and at worst The Untamed is as basic as its title, a joyless slog through an austere sci-fi-adjacent melodrama about the weaponization of desires unexpressed.

Science-fiction tableaus and kitchen sink exchanges are punctuated by these dangerous liaisons, which remove gender from sexual need to leave an otherworldly hunger fuelled by menacing tracking shots and a darkened restraint

Perhaps horror isn't exactly the right word to describe this eerie, bloody, sexy movie.

The Untamed, as a whole, is one of those films that needs to be seen to be believed. And once you've seen it, you won't forget it.

What's remarkable is in how well achieved the extra-terrestrial intruder is, when we finally meet it face to tentacle.