Squad, The

Released by: Scream Factory
Released on: October 21, 2014.
Director: Jaime Osorio Marquez
Cast: Juan Pablo Barragí¡n, Alejandro Aguilar, Mauricio Navas, Juan David Restrepo
Year: 2011
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The Movie:

An isolated military outpost in the wilds of Colombia has lost contact with the outside world. Fearing terrorism, government authorities dispatch a nine-member army squadron to investigate. When the squad reaches the post, one member is injured, forcing the group to storm the compound prematurely. They find it apparently uninhabited, its walls, floors, and furniture saturated with blood and its communication equipment destroyed. There is also evidence that some sort of ritual has taken place to ward off the devil. Further investigation results in the discovery of a single survivor—a female chained in a dark, dank room—who either refuses or is unable to speak. A journal is uncovered which, rather than clearing things up, makes things more confusing and sinister. As a thick fog sets in, members of the squad come to believe that the woman is a guerrilla terrorist or a witch… or both. The discovery of the missing men's bodies escalates the tension, and when one volatile member of the squadron seeks to molest the mute woman (generally referred to as “that bitch” by the men), he is murdered. She escapes, and the men gradually turn on one another until they decimate their own ranks.

While the film is far from original, it does play with genre conventions, and by choosing for its setting a military outpost, it transplants those conventions to the most conventional of genres: the war film. One would think that, given the carnage and real-life horrors of war and the fact that seclusion and loneliness are breeding grounds for violence, more horror films would utilize a claustrophobic military milieu. Yet, few have.

In some ways, The Squad is reminiscent of John Carpenter's The Thing, though far less surreal. There are no aliens, vampires, or werewolves here, just human beings with a propensity for violence, uncertain about themselves and others. The mind—not guerrillas, terrorists, or a foreign army—is the real battleground. Is the mute woman a terrorist, a witch, or something far less sinister? Might she be an innocent civilian who wandered into the wrong camp, an outpost of men who have been isolated from the rest of the world as well as the opposite sex? The script, co-written by Diego Vivanco and director Jaime Osorio Marquez, offers few direct answers to the questions it asks.

Shot on an exceedingly small budget—reportedly less than $1.5 million—Marquez employs heavy doses of ambiguity as he tells his story. The real monster is the dark, isolated setting, which works a terrible and oppressive magic on those confined within it. Marquez suggests the supernatural by shooting the mute woman either from a distance or in the background, presenting her features in a blurred, frightening manner. He also drains the proceedings of most of their color, creating an intentionally drab portrait of men at the edge of a mental precipice, one to which their own emotional stagnation and paranoia has brought them.

That's not to say that the film is entirely successful. The first third is largely sans dialogue, giving it an early-sound-era feel incongruous with the type of story it wants to tell. The performances are uniformly excellent, especially Juan Pablo Barragí¡n as Ponce, but some characters are difficult to distinguish from others (few are given backstories, and much of the dialogue was improvised during rehearsals). The action assumes a 'been there, done that' feel as too many similar arguments—“Is she or isn't she a monster?”— play out. Clocking in at approximately 107 minutes, it overstays its welcome with a lack of variety in action and dialog, a situation that the inclusion of backstories would likely have alleviated.

Video/Audio/Extras:

Filmed in Los Nevados National Park, Colombia, The Squad (original title: El pí¡ramo) is a rare example of a Colombian horror film, albeit one produced with Argentinian and Spanish backing. It spent a couple of years on the independent and horror film circuits, building a surprisingly large cult following among both foreign and horror film aficionados. Yet, despite the interest, it wasn't until 2014 that a North American distributor chose to circulate it in the United States; Scream Factory, a subsidiary of Shout! Factory, is releasing the film on both DVD and Blu-ray.

Scream presents the film on BD in its original aspect ratio of 2.35:1, AVC encoded at 1080p high definition. Detail is sharp, particularly in external shots where there is a great deal of vegetation and local geology to be seen. There is no grain on view, but that has less to do with the transfer than it does with the way the film was shot, and nowhere does DNR appear to have been used to the detriment of the detail. Images remain crystal clear except in those instances in which the director wanted the darkness or copious amounts of fog to dim them. Colors tend toward gray or green, as was intended by the director, who has drained the film of most of its color per the fashion of the day. (For other examples, see Hammer's The Woman in Black and David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, among others.) All in all, the visual presentation is as near perfect as a BD can come.

There are two audio options present, both of them in Spanish: 5.1 DTS-HD and 2.0 DTS-HD. The 5.1 mix is the more robust of the two, but given that the film's score is minimalist, the action mostly subdued, and the dialogue absent for long stretches, either choice is fine. Optional English subtitles are also provided.

The BD offers an attractive menu replete with billowing fog, though more than eight chapters would have been welcome for easier access to specific scenes. The extras include a standard definition, English-language trailer from Momentum Pictures that is considerably lighter and less detailed than the film itself, and Behind the Squad, a collection of making-of featurettes intended for Spanish-speaking markets (also with English subtitles). As the title suggests, it includes behind-the-scenes footage and interview snippets with key cast and crew. Because the individuals are not always identified and are to a degree interchangeable, these collected featurettes are sometimes difficult to follow. They are interesting nonetheless as they reveal various facts, such as the government withdrawing the crew's permit to shoot in a military base despite production being well under way, and because of the inclement weather, cast and crew were plagued by colds, diarrhea, and muscle spasms, leading to a difficult shoot. Behind the Squad is divided into four chapters, each one marking the spot where one of the individual featurettes begins. The final two featurettes are the most informative, providing key information about the story, characters, actors, and production.

The Final Word:

The Squad is a fairly monotonous, repetitious film, but its moderately successful melding of psychological drama and horror make it worth a viewing. The performances are intense and authentic, at times breaking through the one-dimensional, clichéd characterizations forced upon the actors by the screenplay. Scream Factory's presentation certainly can't be faulted; the audio-visual presentation comes close to perfection, and there are a few extras to satisfy the film's hardcore fans.

Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!