Directed by Jaime Osorio Marquez, who also co-wrote, 2011's The Squad (or El páramo if you prefer) is a Columbian picture that follows a squad of soldiers led by a man named Sanchez (Mauricio Navas). He and his team are to check out the area in which they've been dispatched for guerilla forces as the powers that be have recently lost contact with those stationed at a nearby base. One of the men, Sarge (Andrés Castañeda), gets into it with Arango (Andres Torres) who would like to head out and find his missing brother, one of them men who was stationed at the base and is now missing in action. There is dissention amongst the soldiers very early on. Arango decides he's going to do what we wants and when Parra (Mateo Stevel) tries to stop him, he winds up stepping on a landmine and in doing so, takes out the team's radio.

The squad head towards the base, figuring that with a fog rolling in it won't be long before the guerillas launch an assault, but when they get there they find that there's no one left alive, just a few scattered corpses and some random gore remain. Indio (Nelson Camayo) explores and finds some strange writing on the wall of a small store room. Further exploration reveals a woman (Daniela Catz) hiding out there, seemingly quite insane, though Sarge believes her to be in cahoots with the guerilla forces. It's no use interrogating her though, because she will only scream at them, leading some to believe she may very well be a witch. When the log book for the base is found, it would seem those suspicions are correct and when the woman escapes and another solider winds up dead, that aforementioned dissention soon turns to increasingly hostile paranoia.

This is a modestly budgeted picture to be sure but Marquez, in what would appear to be his feature debut, plays to the strengths of the production. Rather than stretch things and go for big flashy set pieces and gory set pieces, he instead shows admirable restraint in this area and lets the increasingly dire circumstances that the members of this team find themselves in build in effectively tense ways. Once the action heads inside the base, the claustrophobic camerawork helps to create a very dark mood, the kind in which you realize that all involved should very well start fearing for their lives and this makes what happens between all parties later in the film considerably more appropriate and, yes, even believable under the circumstances. The film also puts an interesting cultural spin on what is essentially a military themed horror film like The Bunker that borrows some thematic elements from Carpenter's remake of The Thing. That ever important element of trust is a problem for this group right from the start, not just because of what happens once they enter the base but because they are actively engaged in military combat with guerilla fighters who happen to be their own countrymen.

The movie is well shot, though for all intents and purposes it has been drained of a lot of color. This helps to keep the film dark looking and that in turn sets the mood for the story rather appropriately. This also allows for Marquez to create some interesting visual contrasts, the most obvious example being the red blood splatter that is used. There's good use of location photography here and the music from Ruy Folguera is quite good too. The performances work and work well with each of the principals playing their parts quite convincingly though there are times where the characters aren't as well defined as maybe we would have liked. The film's ending isn't quite what it could have been, it's a bit too predictable for its own good, but everything leading up to it is very well done.

The Squad looks about as good as can probably be expected in the AVC encoded 2.35.1 widescreen transfer, a 1080p high definition offerings from Shout! Factory that presents the film in its original aspect ratio. Shot on high end DV, detail varies from shot to shot but is generally good as is color reproduction, though keep in mind that post production tinkering has intentionally drained a lot of the brighter hues out of the image for stylistic effect. Some softness is forgivable given the film's modest budget but overall things look decent here, better than what standard definition can provide, and the detail levels are frequently impressive. There are no problems with print damage, dirt or debris (obviously) and only what appears to be mild shimmering visible in a few scenes. A little bit of crush can be spotted in some of the darker scenes as well as a few minor compression artifacts that pop up here and there, but this is pretty minor. All in all the movie looks very good on Blu-ray.