Las Antropófagas (2019)

I have made some questionable calls in my time watching films. Bad sequels, straight-to-video nonsense, films I knew were going to be rough before I even pressed play. But I can say with full confidence that Las Antropófagas sits in a category almost entirely its own. This is, without exaggeration, one of the worst films I have ever seen in my life. And I mean that across every single dimension you could possibly judge a film on.

This is my A-Z World Movie Tour, and Ecuador brought me here. I want to be clear: I take the tour seriously. I genuinely try to find something worth watching from every country, something that gives me a window into a culture, a story, a perspective I might not otherwise get. So when I landed on this one, I was going in good faith. I came out the other side feeling like I had made a catastrophic error in judgement, and I have nobody to blame but myself.

Where do I even start? The story, if you can call it that, is an absolute mess from beginning to end. I sat there genuinely trying to follow what was happening, trying to find the thread, the logic, any internal consistency at all. There was none. Events occur. Things happen. People appear. None of it connects in any meaningful way. I have seen films that are deliberately surreal, deliberately strange, and I can appreciate that. I loved Tiger Stripes for exactly that kind of unsettling, hard-to-categorise weirdness. But there is a world of difference between strange-with-purpose and just plain broken. Las Antropófagas is the latter. It does not feel experimental. It feels like nobody had a script, or if they did, nobody read it twice.

The performances do not save it. The direction does not save it. The technical side of things, from the photography to the sound, does not save it. Normally when a film is struggling in one area, something else picks up the slack. Here, every single department seems to be in freefall simultaneously. It is genuinely impressive in the worst possible way, like watching every component of a car fail at exactly the same moment.

I keep coming back to that word: sense. A film does not have to be clever or profound or even particularly well made to make sense. It just has to give you something to hold onto, some reason to keep watching, some basic coherence between one scene and the next. Las Antropófagas offers none of that. By the time it was over, I was not angry or disappointed in the way a bad blockbuster might leave you. I was just baffled. Genuinely, completely baffled that this exists in the form it does.

Look, I am not here to be cruel for the sake of it. Making a film is hard. Getting a film made at all is an achievement. But watching a film is also a choice, and sitting through this one felt like a choice I was punishing myself for in real time. The A-Z World Movie Tour is supposed to broaden my horizons, introduce me to voices and stories from corners of world cinema I do not usually explore. Ecuador, I am sure, has brilliant films in it. I just did not find one.

Half a star, and that half is being generous on the grounds that it is a completed feature film. Beyond that, I cannot find anything to recommend here. Avoid this one entirely. Learn from my mistake.

Rating: ½  | Year: 2019  | Watched: 2025-06-12

View on Letterboxd →

Where to watch

Watch in the UK
Stream: Amazon Prime Video · Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi

Watch in the US
Rent: Amazon Video
Buy: Amazon Video
Physical: Amazon US

Affiliate disclosure: Movies With Macca may earn a small commission on purchases or subscriptions started via these links. It costs you nothing extra.

Related on Movies With Macca

More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More horror: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Viy (1967) · Nightmare City (1980) · Angst (1983)