The Octavio Revol Molina written and directed Terror in the Andes might have a forgettable title (original title the more simple El Ucumar), but it does deal with a cryptid (named the ucumar of course) that is believed by some to exist in the real world. Using what I assume to be true accounts of the half-man/half-bear creature and myths of it, you would think this could make for a captivating movie.
Biologist Dante (Nicolás Obregón) and his partner and girlfriend, Josefina (Clara Kovacic), as well as a hired photographer (Gastón Palermo), have travelled to the Andes in Argentina to look for evidence of bears inhabiting the area. Instead of rumours of bears, the locals are obsessed with a cryptid known as the ucumar, who they believe to live in the nearby wilds. The photographer becomes almost obsessed by the tales of this creature, much to the annoyance of Dante, who wants to focus on what he sees as his legitimate study of actual animals. A local guide tells the trio he knows the location where they can find evidence of bears, and that he is happy to lead them there.
Rather than a more traditional creature feature horror, this comes across as almost a collection of short stories, with the meaty, yet forgettable main plotline feeling like a wraparound segment. Each short story is set out as a flashback showing the story that a side character (or indeed book) is telling. These are complete with title cards giving the month and year the story allegedly took place in. I'm assuming these short stories were all based on real encounters, as they had the feel of them, namely that not much really happens other than a character encountering the bear-like monster. It doesn't make for the most exciting of times.
This is all filmed in a variety of beautiful looking locations, with neat use of drone shots to show the vast forest. The dynamic of the main trip of characters was fine if nothing special, seemed to be division thrown in at times just to have something happening, and also possibly a love-triangle subplot (I may have invented that myself, not totally sure).
The ucumar is rarely shown, but when it is, it gets to be fully revealed a few times. Not too memorable; a bigfoot type hairy creature that often just stands around not really doing anything on screen. It wasn't particularly scary looking, and later events give it a silly twist that boarded on the surreal. As silly as things get, at least it led to something interesting happening, better than the slow pace of the rest of this 80 minute horror.
Terror in the Andes wasn't so much terror as mild boredom. The scenery was nice to look at, but there was little excitement in the events that happened around that attractive scenery. A meandering and slow tale that kept getting derailed by the tepid flashback encounters. Maybe based on actual accounts, I felt it needed a bit of spicing up to make it work effectively as a horror film. Terror in the Andes came to horror streaming platform BloodStream on August 11th.
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