User reviews

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.

It's a sort-of sci-fi relationship drama that is single-minded in its approach to sexual dynamics with a handful of characters dedicated to instant gratification. I really liked this film. The story, acting, cinematography and setting were all compelling to me, but I can't say it's amazing.

It presents itself as a mystery, drip-feeding information to the viewer. But it really isn't a mystery. There is no 'whodunnit' element. It is always very clear who does what and why, so the audience is left with very little to ponder or think about as the story unfolds. There are plenty of intentional plot holes (the sci-fi elements are almost entirely unexplored) but they are ultimately irrelevant to the main story. That's the problem. There is no grand metaphor here. There are no conundrums to puzzle over and, after watching it, the questions you have won't be about the characters or the events or themes or what it all means. You know exactly what it all means. You may have simple questions, like who were the couple in the woods? Why didn't they do x,y or z? But your mind won't be whirring with heady concepts, which is what I demand from good sci-fi.

It's a simple film that could really benefit from a deeper subtext or some novelistic elements to give the story more 'meat'. However, as a streamlined drama that takes a prurient look at sexual frustration and secret desires, it's incredibly well presented and has mostly excellent performances. Overall, it's a bold and very unique story. Movies like this don't come around often and so I can strongly recommended it for fans of horror, sci-fi and mystery (even though it is none of those things!).

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.

"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.

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.

Giving in to your lust and pleasure and indulging in it, may not be the safest thing to do. And even though we know this (even if it sometimes it's just somewhere buried deep inside, we do know it), we can not help ourselves from time to time to go overboard. Or to just simply do something that makes no sense.

All this get heightened when we mix something from far out there. Although in this case it seems enclosed and contained, it is anything but. In a way this reminds me a bit of little shop of horrors. But this is not made in a funny way and it is pretty sexual. So mix in a bit of alien Hentai and you get this here. It is explicit but while I didn't stop/pause or rewind I don't think to the point of actual penetration. Still weird stuff to say the least and obviously meant to shock in more than one way.

Story makes sense (if you get over the initial Science Fiction part of it) and is decent - again, only if you're not offended by the nature and the depiction ...

A elderly couple house a strange creature from space in their barn. This creature provides great sexual pleasure and indeed brings hidden desires for instant gratification to the surface. However, the creature is also capable of destroying. In the forefront of the story though is a decaying marriage where the wife seeks a better life and a decent sex life, as her husband is bored, abusive and having a failing relationship with his brother in law.

Very odd mixture of horror / sci-fi and domestic drama in that whilst the performances and the tone are well enough handled, the sci-fi and the domestic drama don't always compliment each other successfully, such that the switch from one to the other is frequently uncomfortable and unfulfilling story wise. Very much more domestic drama than Sci-fi, by the end you can't help wondering if a bit more exploitative horror might not have helped.

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.

The story primarily revolves around a toxic love triangle that would be right at home in a soap opera if it weren't for all the tentacle sex.

The melodrama is a slow burn, but nothing I would call art house. The tension between the characters is nicely expressed through effective performances and a moody atmosphere.

The monster element is alluded to quickly, but takes it's time to fully materialize, keeping things subtle enough for some low key creepiness, but certainly wouldn't wet the appetite of anyone expecting a full blown creature feature.

It's a rather original premise, albeit a popular hentai theme, I'm not sure it's ever been presented as this kind of serious metaphor. Though the allegory may be thin, there's still some depth to try piece together.

One thing I can't help but mention is that the first leg of the film seems needlessly confusing as the two lead actresses look somewhat similar and the movie doesn't go out of it's way to make it clear that they are different characters. Maybe it's on me for skim reading subtitles and glazing over names, but I can't help but be curious if I'm the only one who had to pause and go "wtf, why is she hitting on her brother?"

There is a nod to director, Zulawski in the closing credits of this film and no wonder. What is surprising is that I have never quite got round to seeing Possession, the evening for indulging in the spectacle of Isabelle Adjani engaged (in reality or not) with a many tentacled creature, has never quite come around, and then I fall into this. 'Disgusting', 'unnecessary', 'science-fi' 'entrancing', and 'disturbing yet beautiful', various parties have cried but only the last two can I possibly concur with. The difficult roles are well played, including two young children, and although the film is peppered with graphic sex and violence, it is that element of doom that worries the most. For such a vivid film, including much that is most alluring, there is clearly established the threat of something terrible in the woods and more specifically, the cabin in the woods. Appalling, amazing, affecting and surprisingly survives explicit revelations concerning the being when might have expected that less might be more.

So this movie is mostly about a woman whose husband is having a gay relationship with her brother, while her own sex life is unsatisfying. The movie eventually has an alien monster that looks like it got lost on it's way to a Japanese animated porn movie. But the monster isn't really explained, and frankly, you could have cut the whole part with it out, and it wouldn't have changed the movie all that much.

The human parts of the story are kind of dull as well. I think there are supposed to be deeper meanings here, or something, but not really.

The acting, the cinematography, the soundtrack, and the sets/locations are all well above average.

The plot and direction of the movie are less so, unfortunately.

Truly, many parts of this film are simply gorgeous to watch. It just doesn't really go anywhere, though. None of the characters are very likable (the Veronica character ends up serving little purpose, and her story arc goes almost nowhere consequential to the film), and the sci-fi element is just that; an element. The Untamed plays more heavily as a character drama rather than an alien sci-fi or a horror film.

I wouldn't call this a waste of time; there's a lot to enjoy here. It was clearly a passion project and the effort shows. It's just an incredibly slow burn with almost no brevity or humor. Be prepared for very little action, only a few creepy moments, and a good deal of nudity.

C+, would watch again, reluctantly though.

The sci-fi part of it was interesting but the long drawn out scenes of families struggling killed the film. Should have just dropped the sci-fi and do a family drama instead. And save the sci-fi for an actual movie.

Alejandra is ensnared in a marriage without emotion or passion. Her macho husband Angel is in a hidden relationship with her brother Fabian. It takes a mysterious and confident loner, Veronica, to break Alejandra out of her funk. A cabin in the woods, imbued with an alien presence, provides a source of pleasure to both women. It is also a force of destruction. The same source that sets them free from a chauvinistic and homophobic society, may also be their undoing. Nothing will be the same for them. They struggle to find a balance.

The Untamed combines science fiction with horror and eroticism in a thrilling way. It is entrancing, totally unique and extremely unpredictable. It explores our primal desires as well as our tendency towards self-destruction. The vision of the film is liberating. It not only breaks our notions of film genres and chauvinistic society, it toys with our notions of sound. As with films by Nicolas Winding Refn, the acoustics heighten the tension. There is so much depth and pleasure here. Escalante won the Best Director prize at Cannes for 2013 film Heli. This is a better film. Seen at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

There's so many negative things but first of all I wanna point out what I personally liked: I really enjoyed the fact the director had brunette people as actors and actresses in the film (it seems so trivial but it's actually a rarity in our national cinematic productions). Another positive thing are the filming locations in Guanajuato. Everything is just so organic and authentically mexican, like when they show a sensationalist newspaper with shocking photos and headlines, the cantinas with drunk fights or the scene in downtown! I was so impressed with this because there's so much propaganda initiated by Televisa and perpertrated by every Netflix-Mexican coproduction, in which suddenly everyone's white and has a lot of money. Well, this film does an INCREDIBLE job in showing the true face of Mexico in terms of locations and people. The camerawork was also pristine.. the rural scenes are just so beautiful... when the film started and saw the trailer I actually thought this had some big potential of being a GOOD mexican horror film! I could actually describe the trailer as a horny Tarkovsky, but oh man... the disappointment hit hard after 20 minutes or so.

Maybe the financing of this movie just went straight in locations, lighting and cameras, but... no one actually thought about... the PLOT???? it's so dumb, confusing, strange and bad. I think the initial idea for the project came after the director watched some hentai and thought: YEAH! this is a cool plot! but dude, it just doesn't sustain by itself the whole movie, 1:30 hours long.

No character development, no explaining where the alien sex-creature came, how the cult people or "scientists" found it out or what are their intentions. Besides the acting is plain, monotonous, one dimensional and boring! no one is likeable (except the brother of the female protagonist) and that's pretty much all. The women in there are passive beings with no voice or power whatsoever, the men are macho, stupid and egocentrical. I would have accepted this as a social critique towards the femininity / masculinity roles in mexican society but none of substance happens in here. the film had opportunities to shine but it was wasted. Even when you can see how there's big influence from Tarkovsky and Lars Von Trier.

PD: there were a couple of aspects in which the film failed to represent the real Mexico: in the movie the justice system is efficient and actually incarcerates bad people and second, the government's hospitals are not super modernized unless you're paying to some private clinical.