Indigenous

AKA: Prey

A group of five young American friends head down to Panama for one last tropical “hoorah” before the struggles of life inevitably get in the way. While looking up some fun activities to do, one of them finds out about a hike to a gorgeous and “mystical” waterfall in a nearby jungle called the Darien Gap. The group is raring to go and Carmen, a local who they’ve been spending time with and used to visit the waterfall, agrees to take them. But Carmen’s friend Julio advises against it. Strange things have been happening in the Darien Gap in the last few years, and more than a few people, locals and otherwise, have been reported missing, causing the local authorities to advise against visiting. Nobody’s sure what the problem is, but word is a Chupacabra is prowling those woods. Due to the danger, Julio makes Carmen promise not to take their new friends to the forest. But Carmen isn’t the type of person who believes in urban legends or likes being told what to do, so the next morning she and her new buddies head off into the wilderness. But instead of having a nice day out in the jungle enjoying the scenery, the skeptical group is about to discover that it can be very dangerous to completely ignore the urban legends the locals warn you about.

Indigenous has been on my watchlist for ages, and I remember that the only reason I even put it there in the first place, was because there really weren’t a lot of film’s focused around the Chupacabra at the time. Or, well, there were some others, but this was one of the few that ranked above a two star rating and didn’t look like it was going to make me want to scratch my eyes out, so onto the list it went. Now of course there are a lot more, but oddly enough this one is still one of the better rated outings revolving around the famed goat sucker. Which, after watching it, I find very surprising, because precious little about it seems to be reminiscent of that specific bit of folklore.

Story-wise, the film feels like some amalgamation of The Ruins and The Descent. You’ve got a group of non-locals heading into a remote and notorious area after they’ve been advised against it (The Ruins), and they become hopelessly lost and slowly picked off by some unfamiliar force that seems pretty dead-set on eating them (The Descent). But, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is unable to live up the quality of either of those films. Partially because it spends so much time on mundane filler that the film feels unfocused. A good chunk of the first half of the film feels like watching the un-edited version of the group’s vacation video. You see them arrive at the airport. You see their drive from the airport to the hotel. You watch them eat dinner. You watch them drink. You watch them flirt poorly. You watch them surf, sleep, swim… It just feels never-ending. So when they get to the jungle and someone finally dies it feels like a relief. Like, a good 2/3rds of that first half could have been cut or shortened and we wouldn’t have lost anything of value.

Or at the very least, they could have re-worked those portions to contribute to things like character development and the group’s inner relationships. What’s really frustrating, is that the film started to do just that, like there are hints of those very things peppered in the first 30 minutes, but the film never fails to drop the ball each and every time it starts something. So instead of maybe giving us a reason why Elena and Charlie are mad at each other, we’re just given some not-so-vague hints to illustrate that they are mad at each other, and then when they ‘make up’ when they get to the waterfall we’re expected to, I don’t know, feel relieved about their reconciliation, I guess. But you won’t feel relieved, of course (unless that relief comes in the form of no longer having to hear them snipe and make passive aggressive comments at one another). You’ll likely just feel confused and befuddled, because you never knew why they were crabby to begin with, and you have so little information about them in general that you don’t care either way. Because the film never bothered to properly establish a relationship between them, or anyone else. So anything emotional that does happen to the characters feels wholly forced, because the film has done nothing to earn it. And I want to stress that this is a script issue and is in no way the fault of the actors. The actors were fine in their roles. Not great maybe, but fine. Or at least perfectly able to handle what was thrown at them. It’s not their fault the script gave them nothing to work with.

Another ding against the film is how the monster is depicted. If you know anything about the stories surrounding the Chupacabra, then you know that it’s not really known to attack humans, let alone EAT them. The thing is supposed to only attack livestock and drain their blood. I mean, it’s called “goat sucker” for a reason, folks. It also doesn’t look like you’d expect it to look either. This is kinda where the whole The Descent comparison really starts to become apparent, because if you’ve seen the creatures from that movie, then you also know exactly what the “Chupacabra” is going to look like in this film: Large, pale, fully humanoid, white eyes, sharp teeth, ridiculously fast, and — wait for it — lives in a cave. That’s not even close to the descriptions you’ll find elsewhere, which generally range from small, reptile-like with spikes, to dog-like with a pronounced spinal ridge. None of which of course describes the Indigenous monster. No, this thing is just fully The Descent creature, just with a long, forked tongue. Which, oddly enough, is also not mentioned in any of the creature’s descriptions, but occasionally does show up in illustrations. So that may be the one thing about the creature that the movie got close to getting right. I’ll admit they did a good job with the look of the thing, but it’s still not a Chupacabra, no matter what they’re trying to sell it as.

Believe it or not, there are a couple of things this movie does get right, and the first one is: Location. The vast majority of the film was shot on location in honest-to-god Panama in the honest-to-god jungle, and you know what, bless them for that. Because if I’m going to be forced to watch these dull people spend the first half of the movie drinking and swimming, and the second half doing little more than running around and screaming into the darkness, then at the very least I should have something nice to look at. And you know what, I do. The jungle is beautiful, the beaches were picturesque, and hell, even the resort they stay in is easy on the eyes. The waterfall they trek to is also nice to look at. Maybe not so nice that I’d be content with my final life choices for choosing that to be the ultimate reason for my untimely demise, but as far as waterfalls go, it was very pretty.

Okay, maybe not. If I died due to THIS I might be kinda pissed.

The second part the movie gets right is that it does a decent job with the gore. Granted, most of the bloody parts are only shown shrouded in darkness, so the gorehounds aren’t going to be super excited with this one, but they’re easy enough to see and some of it is pretty grisly, so the film does it’s best to earn that R rating. It might not be enough for some people, but I’m willing to give them some slack because shooting on location is expensive and I’m sure they needed to cut some corners somewhere.

All things considered, I’m not saying Indigenous is an awful movie. I mean, yeah, the creature is a rip-off, the pacing of the first half is bad, and parts of the script are questionable (Like Julio blaming people for not respecting local stories when it was literally a local who guided the group to the waterfall…talk about being a pretentious douche). But it also does a couple of unique things, like changing up the ending to something you probably wouldn’t expect, letting the guy who goes to save the group actually manage to come through, and giving the Americans a link to the outside world via their fully functioning cell phones. All that coupled with the gore, location and the decent acting means the film isn’t a total wash. It just means that it ends up being thoroughly mediocre. So for horror fans it’ll be fine for a quick viewing. Just know that even though Indigenous feels very Descent-like, it’s still several notches in quality below that film.

Indigenous is available on a variety of streaming services.

Indigenous is also available on DVD.

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