The Untamed

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 ...

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?"

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.

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.

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.