Wednesday 28 September 2022

THE UNTAMED (La Región Salvaje) (full article at The Guardian Australia)

Amat Escalante’s The Untamed, aka La Región Salvaje (The Wild Region), is an unusual blend of social realism and Lovecraftian tentacle horror that sounds almost absurd when surmised aloud. Yet it is a unique movie, both original and compelling, which you certainly won’t forget it in a hurry.

Alejandra (Ruth Ramos) is trapped in an unhappy marriage to Ángel (Jesús Meza), who is angry and bad tempered and, as it turns out, having an affair with her brother Fabián (Eden Villavicencio). Fabián is wracked with guilt for betraying his sister, while Ángel’s self-loathing boils over with increasingly nasty displays of homophobia and aggression.

In the countryside, just outside of town, an older couple is keeping an extra-terrestrial creature in their barn. Verónica (Simone Bucio) visits the barn to have sex with the creature (yes, you read that correctly, I said you won’t forget this film). However, the alien becomes increasingly violent and in their most recent encounter Verónica is badly injured.

THE FLY (full article at The Guardian Australia)

Throw a rock at David Cronenberg’s back catalogue and you’re going to hit something dark, nauseating and probably a bit deviant. His latest movie, Crimes of the Future, is just the same, arriving in Australian cinemas almost exactly 36 years after the release of his icky body horror classic The Fly.

Proving itself an exception to the commonly held belief that all remakes are inferior, The Fly is a tight 96 minutes of vomit-soaked bedlam, as Jeff Goldblum inadvertently mutates himself into an ill-tempered insect. On its deeper level, you might want to ponder The Fly as a disease allegory, or perhaps a stern warning against scientific hubris – or maybe you’re just a sick puppy who wants to see a bloke’s hand dissolve in acidic fly puke. They’re all fine reasons to revisit the film which, for my money, is Cronenberg’s best.

Read the full article at The Guardian Australia:

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/aug/31/the-fly-96-minutes-of-grotesque-vomit-soaked-bedlam-and-david-cronenbergs-best-film

IMDB: The Fly