By Simon Thompson
Writer/director Octavio Revol Molina’s Terror In The Andes is a formulaic creature feature that badly suffers from a stop-start narrative pace. While some of the imagery on display is pretty enough to look at, this movie doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself from the rest of the pack.
Set in Northern Argentina, the plot follows a group of biological researchers (Clara Kovacic, Nicolas Obregon, and Gaston Palmero) looking for evidence of an Andean bear native to the region. While visiting a local bar, the group hears of the mythical Ucamar half-bear and half-man and decide to see if it’s real or a fabricated local legend.
Kovacic, Obregon, and Palmero all have good chemistry together which results in their on screen friendship being completely believable. The supporting cast of townspeople do a good job as Cassandra and Jud Crandall types that warn the outsiders about the monster.
The cinematography by Valeria Tochi fully captures the beauty of the setting, with Tochi using a mixture of light greens and dark blues in accordance with the mood of each particular scene. While the camerawork itself is largely generic, there are a few scenes where Molina experiments with swifter and unconventional camera movement but these are exceptions rather than the rule.
The problem that this movie has is that it brings nothing new to the creature feature sub-genre. A lot of the best examples of creature features work because the story is the focal point not the creature itself, take John Carpenter’s The Thing which the titular antagonist as a way to build an atmosphere of paranoia and distrust, or Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth which juxtaposes the world of a dark fantasy labyrinth filled with fantasy creatures with the crushing brutal reality of Francoist Spain, or Jurassic Park which uses the dinosaurs as a method of examining the ethical quandary of playing god. With Terror In The Andes on the other hand, the Ucamar is the story, and very little of interest or substance is developed around it.
Overall, Terror In The Andes is a stale and predictable slog completely lacking in any suspense. While a technically well made movie, its story structure and atmosphere have been better executed in more interesting ways across a long list of vastly superior movies. Speaking of, instead of watching this, order some Chinese food, whack on The Host, Aliens or Jaws, and enjoy a pinnacle of the sub-genre instead.
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