'I’m just now realizing that I kind of adore horror films in which the main threat to human life is in the title of the film. Why bother with a fancy, highfalutin' name for your movie, when you can just call it The Meg or The Nun or Sharknado? With that in mind, I’ll give you three guesses what the main life-threatening force is in Quicksand, the latest from L.A.-based, Colombian-born director Andrés Beltrán (Tarumama) and writer Matt Pitts (Westworld). The film is so simple in its premise that it’s almost ruined when the filmmakers attempt to complicate things with extra characters and far too much plot.
Billed as an English-language Colombian film, Quicksand concerns an American couple (although the wife, Sofia, is played by Colombian actor Carolina Gaitàn, who did a voice in Encanto; husband Josh is played by Allan Hawco), who have already decided to divorce, taking a trip to Colombia for a conference. They get stuck sharing a room because their host (or anyone else) didn’t know they were breaking up, so the trip is off to a tense start. But on their first full day there, they decide to take a hike together through the rainforest, which is known among the locals as a place where the ground turns to dangerous quicksand when it storms. Josh knows this, so when rain threatens, he insists they turn back and head to the car, where they find someone breaking into their vehicle. After confronting the would-be thief, he pulls a gun on the couple and chases them back into the forest, where they almost immediately get sucked into a pocket of quicksand.
Although they manage not to get pulled completely under, a combination of the elements, a lack of food and water, and a few dangerous animals that live in the rainforest, make survival a struggle as they must overcome their personal differences and trust each other to find a way out. The assumption is that no one is looking for them, or even if they are, they won’t be found. The resourcefulness on display is impressive (it helps that they find a recently dead body in the quicksand with them, and the guy has a few helpful tools in his backpack). The couple pull from their collective knowledge about everything from the true nature and behavior of quicksand to how to survive a deadly snakebite for as long as possible.
There’s a silly subplot involving a mutual friend of theirs at the conference who suspects something is wrong much earlier than the couple anticipated, so the search for the missing pair begins much sooner than expected; the would-be thief also factors into the plot late in the film and offers some unexpected assistance. But honestly, Quicksand is at its best when we simply observe Sofia and Josh hash out their lives and go through the couple’s counseling they clearly never attempted back home. This is not a great film, but it’s a fairly effective B-picture with enough tension, quality acting, and believable circumstances to keep things interesting for under 90 minutes. It’s exactly the type of film streaming services were built for.
The film is now streaming on Shudder and will also be available on AMC+.
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