Exploring the Depths of Desire: Amat Escalante's 2016 Genre-Bender

Key Highlights :

1. Director Amat Escalante pushes the limits of science fiction cinema with his 2016 genre-bender, It came from outer space... on a mysterious meteorite that landed in a rural town in the Mexican state of Guanajuato.

2. With its moist, phallic tentacles, tongue-like in color and texture, an extraterrestrial entity caresses the naked body of Verónica (Simone Bucio), a young local woman with an entrancing visage, in the aftermath of sexual ecstasy.

3. This disconcerting image drags us into director Amat Escalante’s brilliantly unsettling 2016 genre-bender: part social realist drama and part sci-fi thriller.

4. These two seemingly opposing modes congeal here in seamless fashion, with the unflinching realism that characterizes Escalante’s work taking on an uncanny aura.

5. Verónica (Simone Bucio) stars in the film, and the violent destinies of these characters converge when Verónica befriends Fabian and invites him to experience the bodily elation of sleeping with the unnamed life form.

6. The repercussions of this encounter will rattle them all.

7. Guiding a group of mostly first-time actors, the filmmaker obtains a bevy of naturalistic performances that preserve their grounded quality even as they interact with the story’s unearthly undercurrents.

8. Ángel (Jesús Meza), a hypermasculine married father of two, is having an affair with his brother-in-law Fabian (Eden Villavicencio), a nurse.

9. Unsuspecting of the unforgivable betrayal, Ángel’s wife, Alejandra (Ruth Ramos), submits to her spouse’s chauvinist behaviors.

10. To hide his own repressed sexuality and self-hatred, Ángel constantly defaults to unabashedly homophobic remarks.

11. He can only satiate his lust in the utmost secrecy, which reaffirms the illicit connotation that he associates with homosexual acts.

12. Escalante extends his examination of our most ingrained impulses to the predilection we have for eating animal meat.

13. The camera focuses just a little too long on a pile of pork at a local market and later on a plate of cooked beef.

14. If we consider our consumption of animals’ bodies intellectually, some of us may come to find it objectionable.

15. And yet it’s a widely accepted practice while sexual intercourse remains taboo in most societies.

16. The imagery also connects with Ángel’s repulsion for meat after a childhood trauma involving his father’s affinity for hunting deer — an incident in turn

     In 2016, director Amat Escalante released a genre-bender that pushed the limits of science fiction cinema. This overlooked film, , is a unique combination of social realist drama and sci-fi thriller that explores the depths of human desire and the consequences of its fulfillment.

     The film opens with a mysterious meteorite that lands in a rural town in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. In the aftermath of its arrival, Verónica (Simone Bucio), a young local woman, finds herself in an intimate encounter with an extraterrestrial entity. Its moist, phallic tentacles caress her naked body in a scene that is both disconcerting and entrancing. This creature, which Verónica later describes as only giving pleasure, is hidden inside an unassuming cabin and under the care of an elderly couple, trained scientists who believe it’s no longer safe for Verónica to visit the creature. Verónica is instead tasked with finding new sexual partners to satisfy its supernatural libido.

     Meanwhile, in town, Ángel (Jesús Meza), a married father of two, is having an affair with his brother-in-law Fabian (Eden Villavicencio). Unsuspecting of Ángel’s betrayal, his wife, Alejandra (Ruth Ramos), submits to his chauvinist behaviors. To hide his own repressed sexuality and self-hatred, Ángel constantly defaults to homophobic remarks. The destinies of these characters converge when Verónica befriends Fabian and invites him to experience the bodily elation of sleeping with the unnamed life form. The repercussions of this encounter will rattle them all.

     Escalante’s examination of our most ingrained impulses extends to the predilection we have for eating animal meat. The camera focuses on a pile of pork at a local market and later on a plate of cooked beef, connecting this to Ángel’s repulsion for meat after a childhood trauma involving his father’s affinity for hunting deer. This imagery also explores the illicit connotation that Ángel associates with homosexual acts.

     The mesmerizingly grotesque figure of the creature, crafted by the Danish VFX effects team, looks believable in its organic tangibleness. When Escalante finally reveals the alien form in full as a squid-like mass, we witness Alejandra reclaiming her life in the extraterrestrial’s embrace. The violent destinies of these characters converge when Verónica befriends Fabian and invites him to experience the bodily elation of sleeping with the unnamed life form. The repercussions of this encounter will rattle them all.

     Guiding a group of mostly first-time actors, Escalante obtains a bevy of naturalistic performances that preserve their grounded quality even as they interact with the story’s unearthly undercurrents. The filmmaker’s unflinching realism takes on an uncanny aura as he explores the carnal urges that are the purest of instincts. Nature is presented as fluctuating between idyllic and unnerving through cinematographer Manuel Alberto Claro’s shots of a celestial open sky that contrasts with still frames of the enigmatic forest.

     One of the most uniquely rendered Mexican films of the last decade, makes us wonder what it’d feel like to be wrapped in the cosmic warmth of the alien’s squiggly arms, where all the answers to the questions of existence and the universe reside. Director Amat Escalante pushes the boundaries of science fiction cinema in this overlooked 2016 genre-bender, creating a unique exploration of human desire and the consequences of its fulfillment.

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