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.
