Indigenous (2014)

Number Rolled: 88

Movie Name/Year: Indigenous (2014)

Tagline: There are places you should never visit. This is one of them.

Genre: Horror

Length: 85 minutes

Rating: R

Production Companies: Kilburn Media

Producer: Trey Bohn, Mark C. Manuel, Ted O’Neal, Bryan O’Reilly, James Samson, Matthew Therrell

Director: Alastair Orr

Writer: Max Roberts

Actors: Zachary Soetenga, Lindsey McKeon, Sofia Pernas, Pierson Fode, Jamie Anderson, Juanxo Villaverde, Laura Penuela, Yana Galuz, Michael Mealor, Jaime Newball, Mark Steger

Blurb from Netflix: When five American tourists take a pleasure trip to Panama, they ignore warnings by the locals and come face-to-face with a bloodsucking monster.

Selina’s Point of View:

Once again, I had no connection to this film.

The settings were fine, the actors were fine, and even the script was fine. But that’s all it was. It was fine. Nothing stood out. Nothing was super interesting. The characters were completely depthless. Even the big bad wasn’t super interesting. It looked like a cross between the original Nosferatu (1922) vampire and Gollum from the Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) trilogy.

I won’t be watching the film again and I won’t be recommending it to anyone looking for entertainment instead of background noise.

Cat’s Point of View:

I get excited when we come up with a creature feature. The majority of these movies tend to fall into the B-movie category. This film would definitely be one of those.

There were, unfortunately, few things in this movie that would transcend mediocrity.

The acting was ok, and the Panamanian setting was beautiful and lush. The film fairly accurately depicts how easy it is to get lost or separated in densely wooded areas – especially ones you are unfamiliar with.

The creature was…interesting. I think that Mark Steger (The Pact, 400 Days, Holidays) did a great job bringing that swiftly moving nightmare machine to life. My problem wasn’t with the performance. My issue was how they identified the creature. To me, at least, it didn’t seem to fit the mythos presented.

Further, you could almost feel that this movie was following a recipe. There were so many tropes going on. I felt like I’d seen the movie before (and I know I haven’t). The social media element made it a little more ‘relevant,’ but that’s a stretch.

I think I actually sighed a bit because the film had nothing original to offer me. I almost missed the decent ‘noises in the foliage’ and ‘getting lost in the dark’ suspense factors because I was so tempted to haul out my phone to play a game.

This movie wasn’t terrible; but it was vanilla. There wasn’t anything to set it apart among creature features to make it worth either watching again or recommending.

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – None

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 14%

Netflix’s Prediction for Selina – 2/5

Selina’s Trust-the-Dice Score – 2/5

Netflix’s Prediction for Cat – 2.5/5

Cat’s Trust-the-Dice Score – 2.5/5

Movie Trailer: