"The Squad"(El Paramo) is a Spanish film about a squad of soldiers who were deployed, lost, and trapped in uncharted territory where they find a creepy silent captive who refuses to cooperate. It's a dreadful film and is definitely atmospheric. It was a good scary movie. If you read any further you will reveal the whole plot of the movie, as I have included many spoilers in my review. So beware! **Contains Spoilers** they hide out at a compound thats old and rundown looking. They discover that anyone who was there is now mysteriously gone and there is blood splattered all over the walls. This movie was moving at an almost boring pace,that is, until one soldier discovers a hollow concrete wall with something behind it. The lieutenant orders his men to knock the wall down and what they find inside is truly terrifying. They find a filthy woman covered in dirt and wearing rags who has been bound at the hands. This woman does not talk, but yells loudly. There's something not right about her. She's very hard to look at, as he is terrifyingly creepy. As a viewer, I immediately knew she had bad motives. The soldiers question the woman about what had happened at that base. How did she get in the wall? What happened to the other men who were stationed there? Who is she? She still refuses to talk. Somehow, the woman escapes and that's when things get really sour and the men start to turn on each other. One of the soldiers finds a journal in the base that reveals a lot about what happened there, and it also reveals that the woman in the wall is actually a witch. While some of the men think she's an innocent old woman who needs help, others think she is a witch who has put a curse on the men and anyone who comes in contact with her will die. Ultimately, they decide that she needs to die and they set out through the fog to hunt her down. It does not go well. It is an overall good idea and a good movie but I wish the director did a little bit more with the supernatural idea and less with the "it's man's fault" idea

This film is estimated at $1,300,000 budget. Acting, camera, environment and direction are superb.This is a psychological triller edging to the horror genre. The tension the movie manages is not like all the other many Hollywood movies where it is mostly sound effects that make people to jump off their seats, with a boring story used many times. Hollywood please it time to change the genre a bit, this movie put Hollywood movies in shame considering the budget. Sound effects are well managed, lightning, location create the eerie atmosphere that makes it a good movie.Movie will be remade the new movie makes justice to this original version.

El Paramo (The Squad) is neat little film coming out of Colombia. It is extraordinary in many ways. Coming from a non-prolific film industry, it falls within the extremely small sub-genre of military horror films. Although to be fair, it is really a psychological thriller. The writer/director Jaime Osorio Marquez handles the story well for a novice film maker. Constraints of low budget are hard to spot, largely due to superb on location filming. The director appreciably discards the urge to let things over the top and follows a minimalist approach. In many ways El Paramo is a minimalist film. The storyline itself is bare minimum and so are the dialogs. Acting is largely good again not requiring much from the actors. A notable exception is the actor Andrés Castañeda (he plays sarge), who hams in a few intense scenes required of him. May be the minimalist approach itself is the biggest flaw of the film. With absolutely no storyline to hold things together, nobody has anything much to do. The basic premise itself, of a tightly knit group of soldiers encountering the unknown and the eventual break down of all form of cohesiveness, is hardly new. The basic storyline is surprisingly similar to The Bunker (2001)by Rob Green and also has shades of South Korean films The Guard Post GP506 (2008) and R-Point (2004) by Kong Su-Chang. Osorio Marquez's film making craft however is inferior to none. He handles the mood building well, aided by a suitably spooky soundtrack. The misty desaturated colours help set the tone. The overall pace may be a tad bit slow and since nothing much happens along the way, the eventual feeling is not satisfying. A lack of a tangible outside threat means that the squad members are ultimately fighting their internal demons. The director gives a hint of the underlying tensions in the opening scenes as well. That part however, is underplayed by the script giving scant background to the viewers. The director obviously fights the urge to provide quick and cheap thrills to the audience and instead chooses to build the tension up gradually through the interplay of the squad members and reaching a crescendo when all military discipline breaks down ultimately. The problem is that the characters themselves are not well developed, and initially it is difficult to differentiate between them due to the desaturated colour tones and overall white gray background of mud and fog. Watching them run around in circles helplessly and turn against each other is a slow painstaking process, something not enjoyable to all. In the bottom line, El Paramo is certainly quality film making. It scores big on atmospherics, photography, sound design and production value especially considering the limited budget. The script is weak however, and is now getting predictable.

Having waited for this release an eternity, I was desperately clinging onto the slim chance that it may have been a worthwhile wait, especially given that in most cases, the wait is better than the end product.Not in this case however.El Paramo (The Squad) is a highly polished, very well produced, dark thriller from a country who in my experience aren't noted for successful movie exports.It puts many mega budget blockbusters to shame, filmed with such care and attention, that from the first scene until the last, I was hooked.No hammy acting or poor scripting dialogue in this - everything was way above and beyond anything I've seen for a long time, and belies the country of origin and also the relatively smallish budget. All actors delivered their lines with ease, their emotions throughout heightening the tension that the writer and director were aiming for, and the locations used were suitably spooky and dark.It's a difficult movie to classify - some will say horror, others thriller - to me this was more a psychological thriller more than anything else - a lot of unseen tension based on unseen forces.Going down that route is a very difficult skill to master as a writer and a director - keeping the audience glued to the screen whilst not showing anything of horror is a talent that abounds in the movie - to successfully manage to portray a story of the breakdown of a regimented society in a short space of time,whilst running with an underlying hint of the paranormal worked perfectly.It's a shame this won't get the release it deserves, however, I'd really like to see more from the writers and director as they've got a supreme talent that deserves more recognition.Top notch 8/10