Chupacabra Territory is directed by Matt McWilliams and follows Amber (Sarah Nicklin), a witch, medium, clairvoyant, amateur cryptozoologist and overall dirty hippie; Joe (Michael Reed), the guy that wants to get in her pants; Morgan (Alex Hayek), the histrionic comedic foil that seems to have no interest in coming along, but does anyway; and Dave (Bryant Jensen), the camera guy who doesn’t matter because he’s the camera guy and does not contribute in any significant way to the film, as they travel into the woods for proof of the existence of the chupacabra.

Basically, it’s The Blair Witch Project with an incoherent plot, tolerable, if unconvincing characters, lifelessly edited into a movie that sheepishly cashes in on a tired genre while infusing it with half-baked plotlines that go nowhere and only serve to reinforce how little thought must have been given to this project. Before setting off on their 90-minute slog through the forest, the group encounters a mysterious one-eyed character at a gas station who shows them some mutilated animal carcasses as proof that the chupacabra exists, claiming that he lost his eye wrestling with it and that it’s connected to something he calls “the darkness”. What is the darkness? I don’t really know. Is it the black goop that occasionally gets on people and gives them a rash? Is it that early 00’s glam metal band? The comic book by Marc Silvestri? Some vague, poorly fleshed-out concept that serves no purpose other than to make it seem like there is more going on here than there actually is? The world may never know.

After wandering for a while and destroying the GPS (because they’ve got to get lost somehow), they come upon another group looking for one of their friends who had gone missing. There is some suggestion of a romantic plot line with the camera man who one of the girls from this group instantly starts undressing with her eyes, but this ultimately goes nowhere as this group are seen shortly after getting killed by the chupacabra. Well, kind of, nothing here is ever really shown on screen. This was certainly the right choice, the monster that you don’t see is scarier than the one you do and all that, but the shots are just so obviously framed to hide anything requiring a makeup team that it becomes obvious the choice was budgetary rather than stylistic in nature. You know that CG blood though, the stuff that makes everything worse and has never looked good in anything? It’s got a bunch of that. The cinematography is a mess throughout, spastically switching through multiple cameras to shove the fact that it’s found footage in your face in one scene and then orchestrating elaborate external vehicle shots that would be superfluous in a documentary, let alone given that all they’re trying to do is document the existence of the creature.

The acting is serviceable; Amber is clearly the driving force behind the operation, and her enthusiasm for the hunt is palpable, though her willingness to go to such extreme lengths and risk her life for something that initially appears to be just a hobby comes off as strange and abrupt. Joe is the standard character that is only along to get laid, but as those characters go he’s fairly likable and down to earth, which is a nice departure from the alpha bro angle a lot of these films take. Alex Hayek really seems like he’s trying as Morgan, but while his character has the most presence, he’s written to be a grating, whiny clown whose attempts at comedy mostly fall flat.

The climax is an absolute clusterfuck of “oh shit, we forgot to do anything with this plot line,” as they rush to introduce old characters that have no reason to be there, some military guy in a gas mask that gets killed as soon as he becomes a character, and a plot line about masturbation. Yeah, the chupacabra makes you masturbate, and you can channel it by having sex. I guess, the one time they try that it doesn’t seem to help much, but it does manage to get the film’s breast count up to 4 (that’s two pairs, and no, I’m not counting the one girl that takes her top off in every scene she’s in multiple times) so if you’re lonely and don’t know what is…then you should still probably watch something else.

Chupacabra Territory