Jaime Osorio Márquez’s The Awakening (El Despertar, also known as Operation Black Jungle) is the type of “Predator”-style movie I’ve been waiting for. It strips away any hints of sci-fi and goes full-on Black Hawk Down. It’s not that the 20th Century Fox movie was borderline, but once the hints are placed at the start and the marketing does its thing, it’s hard to forget. What makes this Colombian film both haunting and yet peaceful before the insurgency is how the planning begins. I can hear shades of “House of the Rising Sun” during the setup in the first ten minutes or so.
The military team is preparing for a strategic mission: eliminate a political figure and exit unseen. With Rojas (Claudio Cataño, One Hundred Years of Solitude) and Diaz (Alejandro Buitrago, Narcos) leading the charge, who survives from this unit will depend on who can scream the loudest. They’re strong leading men who handle everything like they’ve spent time in the army, and they carry real presence. Doc (Héctor Sánchez), Matias (Carlos Mariño), and Pardo (Andrea Olaya) round out the team.
When real supernatural forces lurk in the jungles of Colombia, the team encounters something they certainly aren’t prepared for. I’d say this movie is more of a thriller than a covert-ops drama. The atmospheric claustrophobia amps up once a local says the spirit of the land is near. After watching this excellent film, I went searching online to see if this entity was invented or inspired by local stories. I’m more inclined to say what’s presented is indigenous to the region. That is, the concepts are based on how the people living in the jungle relate to the land.
The Mobuya comes across less as a simple creature and more as an ancestral presence tied to a sacred territory: a force that protects the place itself and turns the jungle into an active participant when outsiders invade. That framing fits the kind of local Indigenous-style belief in which spirits are everywhere and the land has its own memory and agency. And while some fans were hoping for quick glimpses throughout, all I can spoil is that she’s saved for last for maximum effect. Even if some of the pacing is slow, I was glued to the screen wondering if this female supernatural presence was hiding somewhere!
This area has been subject to many invasions, past and present, so I can imagine more than one ghost is prowling about. The flashbacks make sense. They show conquistadors facing the same threat. It’s no different from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, and that’s a win in my book.
Back in the present, once audiences know something is hunting this team and she won’t take prisoners, that’s when the blood and guts get wonderfully spilled. And with how special-effects technology has evolved from one film to another, this one is a lot grislier.
In some ways, this is the classic type of horror that even The Mummy (2017) and Lee Cronin’s version should’ve brought out. The dread is better defined, and what’s presented is brutal. In fact, if I had to compare it to a certain role-playing game, I feel Delta Green fits the bill quite right. A witch evoking this deity does much of the heavy lifting to create the climax, which means we have a winner. It’s as if she wants the deaths to have purpose as sacrifices to honour a chthonic force or as acts that tighten a blood oath.
Those are the things I like to know more about, especially regarding the presence that this team awakens, hence the film’s title. Not only are classic tropes at play, but we also get a tale of terror in which I do not expect anyone to survive. That much is certain.
Sadly, Márquez passed away during the making of this movie. Even though the screenplay was set in stone, the way he builds up to the climax is fast and doesn’t leave time for me to catch my breath. The directors who took over managed to keep that energy up, and the end result is seamless. I don’t see too much of a difference between the acts, even though there’s no public record of how much of the film was under his direction. What’s built leads to a terrific standoff between man and the force in the jungle, and who gets the last laugh (those who have seen Predator know what I mean) is for me to know and audiences to go see.
4 Stars out of 5
The Awakening Trailer
