Thursday 14 March 2013

The Squad


The Squad

When all radio contact is lost with a remote military base high in the mountains, the Colombian authorities, fearing a terrorist attack, send a nine-man squad of soldiers in to investigate.

Deploying in a thick, almost supernatural fog, the squad enters the base and finds it deserted.  Something bad has clearly happened though; meals lie half-eaten, there are signs that a struggle has clearly taken place, blood and gore splatter the walls.  But there are no bodies.  Was the outpost attacked by guerillas or is there a more sinister explanation?  Then the squad finds a woman imprisoned in a storeroom, chained and walled up alive, strange, superstitious symbols and markings covering the walls.  Is she an innocent victim?  A terrorist?  Is she, as some of the men come to believe, a witch? And what is the deal with all the weird little Blair Witch-style wind chimes and ornaments made out of bone?

As darkness falls and tensions build, the squad is fractured by paranoia, fear and suspicion haunted by the specters of past guilt.  One by one the soldiers find themselves turning on one another as they are consumed by madness, despair and death.

If you feel suffocated by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu while watching writer/director Jaime Osorio Marquez’s debut feature The Squad, do not be alarmed.  If, as the protagonists give in to their baser instincts and are destroyed, you think: “I’ve seen this film before,” you’re probably right.  You have seen this film before.  It just wasn’t Colombian. You’re probably thinking of K-horror flick R-Point, probably one of the finest horror movies of the last decade, which saw an unlucky squad of Korean soldiers meet a sticky end during the Vietnam War while looking for a lost patrol.  Or maybe you’re thinking of the underrated Brit horror The Bunker, which saw a squad of German soldiers (among them Jason Flemyng and Eddie Marsan) come to a sticky end while investigating an abandoned bunker during WW2. 

That’s not to say The Squad is bad.  It’s not.  It’s an edgy, moody, little slowburner of a film with a cloying atmosphere you could cut with a knife.  Cinematographer Alejandro Moreno fills the frame with some fantastic imagery but the thing that strikes you most about the film is the sound, or rather the lack of sound.  The sound design is taut, spare, filled with heavy, ominous silences.  The performances are all good, even if the characters are a little indistinguishable from one another, and there’s some fantastic jump out of your skin moments.  Particularly good is a confused shootout in a virtual whiteout as the soldiers jump at nothing, firing blindly in the fog.  And the suggestion of past sins eating the squad alive is nicely underplayed.  But while the tension builds nicely to hysterical levels, the payoff fails to satisfy and the film’s elliptical nature becomes frustrating. 

The Squad is an interesting little horror movie with style to burn and we’re going to be seeing a lot more of director Marquez but ultimately the film just doesn’t satisfy.  And you won’t be able to shake that sense of déjà vu.

David Watson

Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
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Language:
Spanish
Certificate:
18
Rating:
3/5

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