The problem with many horror movies nowadays is that it’s all about the threat. The characters are mainly there to be fed to the central horror, with just one or two of them spared at the end for the sake of narrative convention. Because in theory, the main characters are the good guys, and at least one among them should be worth saving. But a lot of modern horror movies don’t actually care about the characters, and they create stories where the characters don’t earn their salvation. This is exactly what happens in Indigenous, where another interchangeable cast of young white people venture into dangerous territory and are killed off one by one.
Scott and Steph (Zachary Soetenga and Lindsey McKeon) meet up with a group of friends in Panama for one last vacation before Steph goes to veterinary school. Scott gets curious about a jungle region of the country that seems to be largely unexplored. They are told to stay away from the place, but a local tells them that she can guide them to a beautiful waterfall in the middle of the region. Ignoring all warnings, they head into the jungle and find that waterfall. But their pleasure is short-lived, as there is something dangerous in the jungle with them.
The film opens with text that informs the audience that half the world believes in creatures that aren’t supposed to exist. It turns out that this is actually part of the point of the movie. The characters don’t matter as much as the idea that there are dangerous cryptids out there, and that a good chunk of the world’s population is adamant that they actually exist. The second half of the movie devotes time to depicting how the news would react to video evidence of a chupacabra. There isn’t much gained from all this. The film doesn’t actually have much insight into people’s attitudes towards strange phenomena.
All the film has is a bunch of indistinct characters stupidly trudging their way into peril. It should be that these characters were warned several times not to go into the jungle. They even saw a video of the monster attacking another group of people. But they’re stupid enough to go in anyway. And once in, they don’t do anything to better their situation. It’s just hard to care about anything that’s happening. When the last few are inevitably saved, it isn’t because they were exceptionally brave or smart, or because they did anything at all. It isn’t because they learned anything. It’s just because someone has to be saved. Those are the rules.
Blind adherence to rules makes for a pretty boring movie. And there isn’t any inventiveness on the side of the production to give the film any sort of energy. Just like every other horror film, jump scares are the order of the day. This means that it keeps the monster off camera for most of the picture, letting it only appear in brief flashes intended to startle. It just isn’t very scary. The acting is uniformly terrible, with this youngish cast overselling every little bit of business.
Indigenous is yet another example of a modern horror film just trying to get under the lowest possible far to meet genre expectations. Things have actually got much more exciting in the horror realm as of late, with a bunch of young filmmakers reclaiming the genre from the cookie cutter filmmakers that have given the whole enterprise a bad name. And in this burgeoning new era, there just isn’t room for lazy examples like Indigenous.
My Rating:
