(2010, English and Spanish) On assignment in Central America, six years after a NASA space probe, returning from Jupiter's moon Europa, broke apart over Mexico, resulting in aliens infecting most of the country, photojournalist Andrew Kaulder (Scoot McNairy) receives instructions from his publisher to find his daughter at a hospital in San Jose. Andrew locates Samantha Wynden (Whitney Able), a pretty, blonde American tourist, her left arm injured during a recent attack by the creatures.

Directed ("Look after her") to escort Sam back to the US, Andrew resists, saying he's waited three years for this opportunity to document the ongoing crisis. Nevertheless, Andrew accompanies Sam on a train north until they exit (tracks damaged), hitchhiking and then catching a bus for the eastern coast. Missing the last ferry of the day to the US, they haggle with the agent over a price for a ticket ($5,000) and then have to wait until morning for the next crossing.

In the meantime, they enjoy an evening together, getting better acquainted. She's engaged to be married; he has a six-year-old son living with an estranged mother. "Doesn't that bother you?" she asks: "That you need something bad to happen to profit?" He replies: "What? Like a doctor?" Her father will pay him $50,000 for the photo of a child killed by a creature for the front page of the newspaper. "I don't cause it," he defends himself: "I just document it."

Turned down from spending the night with her, Andrew gets drunk and sleeps with a prostitute. When Sam comes to his room early in the morning and sees the girl lying in his bed, she hurriedly walks away; he runs after her in his skivvies, but in the interim the whore disappears with Sam's passport and their money, which Andrew had kept in his room for safekeeping.

Lacking any other means of paying, Sam, who unlike Andrew speaks fluent Spanish, barters her diamond engagement ring for their transport (truck, bribes to officials, river boat) to the walled border of the US, crossing through the quarantined zone.

Director/writer Gareth Edwards, also in charge of photography and special effects, has shaped a low-budget sci-fi thriller into an ironic, authentic, high-suspense adventure. Are the creatures attacking or just defending themselves? The actors are believable (twice Sam needs to stop to pee) and worthy of our concern as their attitudes toward each other undergo gradual transformation; even the alien creatures (squidlike with snaky electrical tentacles), which have infected (mated with?) the native trees, manage to inspire a moment of awe, unlike the impersonal US military, with its remote bomb-bearing jets zooming across the sky. Who are the monsters?

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Copyright © 2011 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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