Musky with sex, this Mexican horror movie begins like a telenovela but deepens into an allegory about the warping power of lust. A young wife and mother (Ruth Ramos) discovers that her macho husband (Jesús Meza) has been having an affair with her gay brother (Eden Villavicencio); incensed, she allows her good friend (Simone Bucio) to lead her deep into the woods, to a place where something very strange is happening. Amat Escalante, directing a script he cowrote with Gibrán Portela, works wonders with a modest budget; his film may lack the subtlety of Val Lewton’s famously allusive RKO chillers, but there’s the same sense that the shadowy rooms braved by the characters are no less than the human psyche itself. In Spanish with subtitles.
The Untamed
1 hour 40 min • 2016
