Wetiko

I’ve no idea how literally to take Wetiko’s claim, displayed in multiple languages during its ominous title sequence, that the film is based on true events. But the thematic elements that constitute the core of its lurid drama ring true enough: centuries after the conquest of the Americas, the colonizers have ceased to violently impose their religion upon the colonized and, in a bitterly ironic reversal, have come to regard the region’s indigenous religious practices as a commodity to be extracted. A sly allegory bathed in tropes associated with vintage exploitation films, Wetiko can be thought of as a cautionary tale about the spiritual gentrification of the Mayan jungle.

Adolescent Aapo (Juan Daniel García Treviño) and his mom run a pet store somewhere in the Yucatán Peninsula. One day, a young woman named Luz (Dalia Xiuhcoatl) comes seeking a particular species of toad. She is a member of the Empire of Love, she explains, and the toad’s venom is required for the group’s healing practices. Aapo’s mom isn’t interested in supplying sacred medicine to what is likely a bunch of ignorant charlatans—the community already has a respected local shaman—but Aapo is lured by the comely Luz’s flirtatiousness and the promise of witnessing tantric rituals should he personally deliver the toads to the Empire’s wilderness domain. Also, Luz is offering sizable remuneration, and one doesn’t get the impression that the pet store is raking it in. So with toads stowed in his knapsack, Aapo sets out on motorbike the following day to find what turns out to be an encampment populated by Luz and similarly foxy disciples, multiple Mayan worker-women named María, a handful of stony-faced male Mayan elders, and some aggressively drug-damaged expat weirdos, all of whom appear to be under the sway of a white, bearded, middle-aged guru named Zake (Neil Sandilands), who speaks broken Spanish and no Mayan and, it’s suggested, hails from South Africa. 

This second feature from Mexican-American writer/director Kerry Mondragon (Tyger Tyger) isn’t subtle: from the prominent placement of the word “Empire” in the cult’s moniker to the portentous use of The Tremeloes’ “Silence Is Golden” throughout the opening and closing sequences—the first time in English, the second in Spanish—the film’s intentions and the moral alignment of its characters are abundantly clear. But Wetiko signals its self-awareness by smartly draping itself in the veneer of ’70s low-budget genre films, bearing ostentatious zooms, trippy echo effects, ghostly flash cuts, and the highly saturated hues of Super-16. The movie’s aesthetic and storytelling are moderately kitschy, sufficiently creepy, and often a lot of fun, though the tension plateaus a bit in the middle. The deployment of familiar stylistics provides ample latitude for Wetiko’s knowing approach to the politics of cultural appropriation to emerge and, by its finale, posit thornier questions that linger with you, such as who gets to claim stewardship of powerful natural resources—even when the recipients of these resources, be they local or foreign, affluent or poor, may be in genuine need of their curative effects.