twilight zone-esque?

I just finished watching this movie on TCM earlier this morning. I did not think of either TZ or Hitchcock while I was watching it, but now that you bring it up, yeah, I can get there but only a little bit. Alfred Hitchcock Presents and most TZ episodes were only a half-hour long, so the writing was generally very tight. For one season, TZ expanded to a full hour and with rare exceptions it was to the detriment of the story as things were padded. Here, things stretch out a bit, but I felt it was to the benefit of the movie as it helped determine the mood.

The film definitely has a Twilight Zone vibe. I partly expected Rod Serling to appear, cigarette in hand, and narrate the opening scene when the entomologist realizes he is stuck in the sand-pit:

Narrator: There was a village, built of rotting wood, and it squatted ugly under a broiling sun like a sick and mangy animal wanting to die. This village had a virus, shared by its people. It was the germ of squalor, of hopelessness, of a loss of faith. For the faithless, the hopeless, the misery-laden, there is time, ample time, to engage in one of the other pursuits of men. They begin to destroy themselves.

I thought that myself immediately after starting to watch it.

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