Pacific

A sextet of white, hormonal vacationers struggle against a mutant, murderous reptile in Gonzalo Gutierrez’s Pacific, a serviceable tropical-island horror flick which does its job in shocking and aweing the viewer enough to distract from the dangling loose ends in what should have been a very simple narrative. With the film sharing quite a few canny similarities to Bong Joon-ho’s The Host, it’s apt that it received its world premiere at the Korean genre film fest BIFAN, before its domestic rollout later this year.

A surprising second feature from a filmmaker who made his directorial debut (and won awards aplenty) with a children’s animation film in 2024, Pacific is perhaps best seen as Gutierrez’s showcase of his versatility and his ability to helm a big-budget VFX-laden blockbuster. And, alongside the Netflix series The Eternaut, it shows that Argentine directors are ready to stand toe to toe with their Hollywood counterparts in sci-fi land. Gutierrez and his multinational producers can expect approval from monster geeks and more bookings on the fantasy festival circuit.

In terms of its story and its worldview, Pacific is old-school to a tee. En route to their splendid summer holiday on a beach somewhere on the Colombian coast, six young people are kicked off their transport because of their unruly behaviour. They end up in some strange seaside village run by a hostile Black shaman who, in the film’s prologue, is seen making a human sacrifice to some unseen entity. Seeking a “party to dive into”, the travellers get themselves mixed up in a voodoo procession before being chased into the sea, as they seek safety in a mysterious island seen as a haven for axolotls.

True to form, the vacationers soon find themselves picked off one by one, as the monster begins to lurk ever closer and be more visible to the protagonists and the viewer. Given the number of people having an input on the screenplay – Natacha Caravia and Luis Langlemey are credited with two more collaborating writers who expanded an original idea by Andrés Gelós – Pacific still comes across as surprisingly slight in the story department. Most of the characters are left as generic ciphers, while hints of an extraterrestrial presence remain strangely unexplained and unconnected with the nature of the flesh-and-blood monster.

As a simple creature feature, however, Pacific delivers. Despite its jarring narrative gaps, Gutierrez’s film looks the part of being the most expensive and ambitious SF actioner to emerge out of South America. Harnessing the striking power of coastal Colombia’s majestic, mesmerising landscapes – either through the characters’ wanderings around the postcard-perfect forests and caverns which will mark their demise, or as inspiration for green-screen work in post-production – the director and his DP Matias Nicolás and art director Mauro Do Porto inject quantum horror through the sights of bizarre outer-space architecture, gory altar rooms and, of course, the very real view of the dexterous beast.

Director: Gonzalo Gutierrez
Screenwriters: Natacha Caravia, Luis Langlemey
Producers: Guido Rud, Mauricio Brunetti
Executive producers: María Florencia Lemoine, Deisy Marroquín, Caii Michelle
Cast: Manolo Cardona, Christopher von Uckermann, Maria Gabriela De Faria
Cinematography: Matias Nicolás
Editing: Martin Blousson, Guillermo Gatti
Art direction: Mauro Do Porto
Music: Pablo Fuu
Sound: Jose Luis Diaz
Production company: Film Sharks
Venue: Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival (B Extreme)
In Spanish
91 minutes