Kicking off at a velocity that would leave most Mission: Impossible entries in its dust, Jean Luc Herbulot’s breathless genre gem vaults us into a darkly poetic, wholly cinematic realm.

Having orchestrated a coup in Guinea-Bissau, extracted a foreign drug lord, and absconded with a gold bounty, the Bangui Hyenas—Chaka (Yann Gael), Rafa (Roger Sallah), and Midnight (Mentor Ba)—find their run of good luck ends abruptly when they’re shot down over Senegal’s Sine Saloum region. Taking refuge in a holiday camp where they don’t exactly blend in, these cutthroat mercenaries arouse suspicion and spark a chain reaction of double-crosses and blackmail attempts. As it becomes apparent that one of their own harbours a secret agenda, supernatural chaos rains down and predatory creatures are unleashed to wreak havoc.

Influenced by genre-benders like Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn, as well as Sine Saloum’s ancestral stories and political realities, Herbulot orchestrates an action-horror film that’s a heady mix of mysticism and mayhem.