The Untamed 2017

A troubled, intimate drama unfolds across two intertwined stories in a stark rural setting. In one thread, a young mother named Alejandra is trapped in a loveless marriage with Ángel, a man who is secretly gay. Ángel carries a brittle public persona, often mocking Fabián, Alejandra’s brother and a nurse, while hiding a private affair with him. Alejandra’s life at home is tense and emotionally unfulfilling, fueling a deep sense of loneliness and sexual frustration. She tries to cope in small, intimate moments, and in a private shower she reaches toward release, only to be interrupted by the intrusion of her children, a moment that underscores how far she feels from the closeness she longs for. The contrast between outward appearances and inner hunger runs through this story, painting Alejandra’s longing in raw, human detail.

In the second thread, Veronica is drawn to a strange, tentacled alien creature that inhabits a crashed meteor kept by an elderly couple in a barn on the countryside. Over years, she explores a secret, intense sexual fascination with the creature, and the experiences bring her intense pleasure. The bond between Veronica and the alien is disrupted when the creature abruptly bites her abdomen, introducing danger where there had been a predictable routine. At the hospital, Veronica forms a fragile friendship with Fabián, who cares for her after the bite, while the couple who own the creature warn her that continuing these visits could put her at serious risk.

As the two storylines develop, tensions mount. Ángel confronts Fabián at work, demanding explanations for the end of their affair, while Fabián declares that their relationship is finished. Veronica, seeking more contact with the creature, is drawn back toward the barn, but the elderly couple decide that its presence has become hazardous. Soon, a frightening sequence unfolds: Fabián is found naked and beaten in a field, hospitalized and unconscious, and Alejandra discovers distressing text messages on Fabián’s phone—messages from Ángel pressing for sex and threatening violence. The resulting disclosures lead to Ángel’s arrest, with Alejandra and a witness from Fabián’s circle testifying to the turbulent dynamic that has fractured multiple lives.

The barn story deepens with mythic, eerie texture. The elderly couple recount how the alien arrived after something from the sky created a crater in a nearby field, a place where animals in the open air engage in wild, unrestrained copulation. Alejandra, increasingly entangled in the mystery surrounding the creature, is drugged by the couple and taken into the barn, where the alien once again asserts its power over her. She continues to visit the barn, sometimes bringing her children along when she cannot find someone to watch them, and the kids play nearby while she encounters the strange being. The couple’s caution about the creature’s violent potential grows heavier, and Veronica finds herself unable to satisfy her desires in ordinary ways, instead longing for the creature’s unique, overwhelming influence.

Meanwhile, Ángel’s parents, wealthy and influential, use their resources to secure his release, forcing him to leave town after a humiliating public ordeal. Undeterred, Ángel seeks reconciliation with Alejandra, hoping to rebuild the family unit he has fractured. Alejandra makes it clear that she has learned the truth about the harm Fabián endured, and, in a moment of rage and fear, Ángel strikes her. He pulls a gun and, in a panic, shoots himself in the leg. Alejandra helps him into her truck and drives away, steering toward the countryside. The pursuit culminates in a cruel turn of fate as she drags the semi-conscious man into the barn, where she discovers Veronica dead, and the creature looms ominously from above.

What follows is a bleak, restrained ending that braids these two narratives together with a sense of inevitability. The older couple and Alejandra jointly dispose of Veronica’s body and Ángel’s body by dumping them into a fresh pit, a grim tableau that underscores the rapid accumulation of corpses and the irreversible consequences of the characters’ choices. As the creature lowers itself toward Ángel’s prone form, the film closes on a stark image of the costs of desire, secrecy, and violence, leaving the viewer with a haunting sense of the boundaries between human longing and otherworldly threat.