The opening scenes of “El lodo” reminded me of “La isla minima”, an excellent Spanish thriller by Alberto Rodriguez, not only because both films are set in the swampy areas of Spain, but also because Raul Arevalo plays both main roles. However, unlike “La isla minima” where the plot was set in the marshes of Andalusia a few years after the end of the dictatorship, “El lodo” takes place in the present in the marshes around Valencia, the city where screenwriter and director Inaki Sanchez Arrieta in reality and lives. Arevalo is not a policeman this time, but a biologist who moved there with his wife Claudia (Paz Vega) and small daughter Julia after accepting a job as a water guard of a nature reserve, which is a protected area.
However, the locals do not care at all that the white lagoon is a protected area that could dry up if something is not changed, and apart from using the water from the lagoon as they please, practically all of them also poach ducks and other animals that live there. It is obvious that there is almost a wild west where everyone does what they want, and Ricardo (Arevalo) would like to forcefully change that and bring order, but it will not be easy. To guess that this family moved here after Ricardo previously saved a similar water area in Brazil, and a year earlier they experienced a tragedy when their son died. Neither Ricardo nor Claudia have recovered from this and while she is on anti-depressants, he seems to be trying to make up for not being able to save his son by working and rescuing endangered areas.
And apparently, one of Sanchez’s models when creating this film, which deals with the well-known theme of newcomers to a closed, rural community that lives by some of its own rules, was Peckinpah’s iconic “Straw Dogs”. Very soon, Ricardo will come into conflict with practically all the locals, who will not just sit quietly and watch him try to change their way of life, but we will soon realize that the situation is far from black and white. While Ricardo is trying to save the reserve, he doesn’t even realize that his family is falling apart and that the situation is getting worse, and the conflict that he will stubbornly and uncompromisingly provoke with the locals will partly arise due to his own frustration, bitterness and anger. Of course, by the end, the situation will completely escalate, and although we have already had the opportunity to see similar stories, Sanchez made a perfectly correct thriller.