Colombian horror film “El Paramo” (“The Squad”) premiered Thursday at a film festival in the United States and will open in Colombian theaters nationwide on October 7.
The Squad will be featured at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas on Thursday. The festival’s website describes Fantastic Fest as being “the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world.” The festival premiere will be the first in the world for the Colombian thriller and will feature Director Jaime Osorio Marquez live in person.
Fantastic Fest writer Michael Lerman explains that “first time director Jaime Osorio Marquez is already a master of storytelling. From the first frames of the film, the characters are in turmoil, engaging in terse, heated snippets of interaction that allow the exposition of their emotional baggage to come out in slow enough drips to keep the audience guessing. Utilizing carefully chosen, confining medium shots, Marquez and his cinematographer Alejandro Moreno build the most suffocating atmosphere since Das Boot (Germany, 1981), one where even the vastest openings are filled with the thick fog of the cloud cover. For most of the movie, neither the characters nor the viewer can see more than a yard in front of their faces, reinforcing the sense of impending doom and keeping you on the edge of your seat.”
United States film fanatics and Colombians alike, will soon be facing the dramatic spectacle of doom for themselves. The Squad has also been touted for a Hollywood remake by Scott LaStaiti, executive producer of Love in the Time of Cholera and horror film Turistas.