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:
Juan
David Restrepo, Andrés
Castañeda, Mateo
Stevel,
Daniela
Catz, Juan
Pablo Barragan, Alejandro
Aguilar
Genres:
Language:
Spanish
Certificate:
18
Rating:
3/5
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