There are two parts, one is the thriller, the other the horror.

Thriller part is interesting. 3 mercenaries flee from a conflict and land in Senegal where they need to fix their planes, ending up in a kind of small tourist village where they need to lay low for a few days. However it turns out that another mercenary is there, and she is aware of their identity as well as a cop, that might be aware or not.

Awa, the other mercenary is deaf, so a lot of talking is done in sign language, most of it untranslated. So it might be explained, but it's not clear how she can be aware of who they are and where they come from, and be at the village basically at the same time as us, clearly having come on purpose for us, when it's hundreds of kilometres from their last known location and they didn't even know they'd be there themselves.

The suspense is good, mainly centred on the tense discussions at dinner. What does Awa want ? Is the cop aware ? And one of them, Chaka, seems to have some history with the place and is hiding something from the others.

And here comes the climax of this part, when Chaka [spoiler]kills the village leader, who was the one that trained him as a child soldier[/spoiler], which instantly turns the story to the horror part.

Turns out the guy had made a pact to keep the bad spirits of the location at bay. You apparently can die just by hearing them. And people from the nearby village attack them to force them to hear the spirits.

Now what is strange is that everyone instantly accepts that, all of that. I guess it's supposed to show the contrast with western way of thinking and that africans just accept the existence of these things (after all one of the three mercenaries is a kind of shaman too), but it's way too casual, and it really diminishes the value of the horror part. Everybody just cover their ears and start fighting with what looks like huge sentient swarm of flies the same way someone would have said "let's hunt pigeons now".

The action is a bit confusing then but since they have ear protections and the swarm seem to be just an illusion, they are actually villagers that can be fought, shot, and killed, it's not that interesting. It's a wonder why some of them die.Even more for [spoiler]the shaman guy. He just sits peacefully, like meditating, under a tree, and asks the others to kill him. He again only speaks in sign, so not clear at all what he's saying. Has he been captured by a spirit and is resisting ? But then how was he captured, it didn't seem that hard to avoid. On the contrary is he keeping the spirits in check ? But no real visible effect.[/spoiler]

Despite these issue the movie is highly watchable, infusing a real seldom seen african feeling into the genres, through landscapes and music, but mostly from the characters themselves in their way of thinking and reacting. Makes for a nice change.