Intensity 🩸🩸 out of 🩸🩸🩸🩸🩸
Directed by Andres Beltran
Quicksand (2023) is a straightforward wilderness survival horror movie that pits a struggling married couple in a pool of quicksand in a Columbian mountain bog. It’s a stylishly shot film and features a pair of fine acting performances. However, to call the quicksand quick would be a misnomer, as the couple struggles… slowly… against the fate of getting sucked to the bottom of this quagmire.
When closing out the year, I found myself checking the offerings from Shudder while making a binge-mode completionist push to watch as many 2023 offerings as I could. I stumbled across this little Colombian survival story and figured, “Hey, it’s a short film, and the trailer looked compelling.” I fully expected this to be a dud, but the film was far more entertaining than I had expected.
Full disclosure: I saw The Devil at 4 O’Clock, an adventure movie starring Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy as a child. In that movie, a pit of quicksand sucks a man to his doom, and that scene haunts me to this day. So, I am a bit predestined to find a movie involving quicksand fascinating. Death by quicksand is slow and terrifying—with plenty of time to call for help. The problem is, where you have quicksand, there are usually few people around, so screaming tends to land on deaf ears. The quicksand trope has become an adventure movie standard, but quicksand rarely makes it into horror movies.
Cast:
- Carolina Gaitan as Sofia: A physician and a dedicated mother who has had enough with her marriage. She’s a Colombian ex-pat now living in the United States and is returning for a medical conference.
- Allan Hawco as Josh: Sofia’s husband who is reluctant to give up on their marriage. He’s bookish, cautious, and eager to go hiking in Colombia.
- Sebastián Eslava as Marcos: Josh’s good friend and the host of the medical conference where Sofia is a presenting speaker.
- Andrés Castañeda as Diego: A local poacher and scoundrel who takes an unhealthy interest in Sofia and Josh.
Short Synopsis
Sofia and Josh return to Colombia, where Sofia was born, so she can present at a medical conference in Bogata. Sadly, their marriage has come apart at the seams. The couple bickers about trivial issues, and the prospect of the pair behaving well together at this conference is highly suspect. In order to relieve some pressure, Josh decides to go on a hike in the nearby mountain wilderness park with his friend, Marcos. When Marcos fails to show up in the morning, Sofia goes with Josh instead. She determined that she didn’t need to prepare anymore for the conference.
As the couple embarks, the hotel staff warns Josh about wandering off marked trails. Be aware of quagmires! The audience knows about the quicksand risk because, in the cold open, a pair of poachers get trapped by a quicksand pit. The trek goes smoothly, initially, though Sofia’s mood has not warmed up. When the couple arrives at the trailhead, they continue to argue. This attitude turns around in a hurry when the couple retreats back to their car during a rainstorm and finds the surviving poacher, Diego, robbing their car. Josh and Sofia escape from Diego, but flee into the mud pits zone in their blind panic.
Sofia is the first to stumble into the quicksand. When Josh arrives to attempt a rescue, she goes under, which forces Josh to jump in after her. Josh pulls Sofia up for air, but the quicksand traps the two of them in place. This ends the first act of the film. The duo gets time to contemplate their relationship while staving off wildlife, hypothermia, and drowning. Chances of rescue are slim to none, and Slim is sliding into the quicksand pit with them.
Evaluation
Quicksand turned out to be better than I had anticipated. I recognize that I may be swimming against the tide of popular opinion with this movie, but I appreciated the reflective take on the protagonist’s relationship. The characters feel like they have a deep history together that has been grinding down over time. The divorcing couple trope is a popular way of creating internal tension in the movie, to begin with. 
The Relationship-Salvaging Disaster Trope is in full effect here. Can the couple resolve things enough to save each other? Other notable horror examples would be Midsommar, Jurassic Park III, and Vacancy. For a movie in which half the running time is the two of them trying to survive a slow-acting trap with plenty of time to consider their history together, it is essential that the chemistry works. Fortunately, that is the strong part of the movie. I found Josh and Sophia plausible and interesting. Your mileage may vary, and I know some people will not have the patience to wait this out.
The plot logistics are admittedly janky. The car robbery was a MacGuffin needed to force the couple off the beaten path. The setup for that sequence seemed more elaborate than needed and felt forced. One of the best scenes involves a snake. I believe a real snake was used, and it was clearly a big constrictor snake (A boa of some sort), which is scary enough. But the plot doubled down and made it poisonous, too, which was bad science. Also, what public agency would allow a public park right next to a death trap like this? 
Concluding Thoughts
I appreciate a good wilderness survival horror movie. I am particularly fond of Backcountry and Open Water as standard bearers of the subgenre. Andres Beltran provided enough tension and threats to make this survival tale interesting to the end. It is a fairly short movie (86 minutes) and went pretty quickly for me. For a movie that I made an impulse Shudder selection, I came out satisfied that it delivered what it suggested. Up to the end, I was unsure if either or both would make it out alive. With survival horror, that is an iffy proposition at best.
It is also good to see a horror movie coming out of Colombia. Patagonia (Argentina, Uruguay, and Chile) has recently produced some very good horror movies. If Colombia can continue making solid offerings, this bodes well. There is plenty of room for good Latin American horror tropes. I would love it if some non-cannibal Amazonian horror would pop up. Are you reading this, Brazil?
You can find Quicksand on Shudder, and it is an unrated movie, likely a PG-13 if reviewed by the MPAA. There is slow-building dread and a couple of skin-crawling moments, but it is largely free of gore and violence.
Review by Eric Li
