Shudder survival thriller Quicksand builds an entire premise around its namesake, leaving a bickering, estranged married couple trapped in a pit of despair. Director Andrés Beltrán and writer Matt Pitts approach the B-movie concept with a seriousness that nearly works for their efficient thriller, placing relevance on the emotional stakes for its leads over jungle thrills. It leaves the thrills underplotted in Quicksand, however.
An opening sequence introduces the unforgiving terrain; a pair of poachers prowl a dangerous area of the Columbian jungle called Las Arenas to hunt and retrieve valuable skin from a venomous snake. Cut to couple Josh (Allan Hawco) and his wife Sofia (Carolina Gaitán) as they head to a medical conference in Bogotá; but the car ride there is rife with friction despite Josh’s best efforts to diffuse the tension. The estranged couple is gearing up for divorce, making this business trip even more uncomfortable. It’s exacerbated by Josh’s eagerness to take a hiking excursion while the more rigid Sofia longs to get business done and return home to the kids. A series of events sees the pair venturing unwittingly out to Las Arenas, where they wind up trapped in quicksand with no way out and no one aware of their location. The icy tension between the pair only heightens the punishment mother nature has in store for them.
Carolina Gaitan as Sofia and Allan Hawco as Josh in Quicksand – Photo Credit: Manuel Olarte/Shudder
Beltrán takes a tactile, practical approach to the setting. Josh and Sofia get sucked into more of a boggy mud pit that makes their physical performances palpable. The grueling exhaustion from the thick muck holding them in place, threatening to pull them under completely, is effective thanks to the tangible component.
Once the spouses get firmly lodged in place, enmeshed in unforgiving mother nature, the plotting slows to a crawl as the script relies on scant few encounters with slithering animals to submerse Josh and Sofia in a primal marriage counseling of sorts. Each jungle obstacle peels back layers to Jack and Sofia’s history, humanizing the initially icy Sofia and revealing a fuller picture that led to their crumbling relationship. On that front, Hawco’s disarming empathy and Gaitán’s relatable resentment of forced pragmatism lend realism and rooting interest. But the marriage woes take up too much space in this underplotted thriller, leading to a repetitive, superficial pattern. Josh and Sofia ultimately encounter too few obstacles, each getting briskly swept aside to give precedence to deep-seated relationship issues.
It results in a feature at odds with itself. On the one hand, Beltrán’s commitment to taking the couple’s predicament seriously results in compelling set pieces and a tender approach to characters that ultimately endear. On the other hand, Quicksand never once acknowledges how outlandish this scenario can be. It also never fully embraces it. The hunters and Las Arenas never get explored beyond setting up the plot, even as a side story incorporates them. Nor does the jungle element come through as much as it could. Instead, it’s reduced to a grim and serious marriage metaphor plot device. Even at a brisk 85-minute runtime, Quicksand often feels stretched too thin.
But it does at least make for a sufficient marriage counseling exercise.
Shudder debuts Quicksand on July 14, 2023.
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