Nitpick. I don’t think it was actually Guatemala, but rather just some made-up Central American country. Still not in the Amazon, though.
The only script of the original I can find online was an earlier version (“Hunter”), that says Central America. I don’t have a copy of the movie, but from what I see online and from what I remember, they may have used Guatemala and the fictional “Val Verde.” (I think they went into Val Verde from a base in Guatemala, IIRC)
I was pretty happy with it. AvP II was a real nadir - I’m surprised such a popular ‘franchise’ permitted such a C-movie to get made in the first place. So it was good to see things get back on track to an extent.
I think the OP hits on the main problem of a lack of suspense - there wasn’t much tautness to the dramatic proceedings by and large. The ending couldn’t do anything other than suck - ‘Now lets get off this goddamn planet’ er…how?
The doctor’s eventual evilness was in the post from the get-go, as well, so didn’t really add much drama. Laurence Fishburn’s character seemed like an excellent idea but was a let down in the end.
There were a lot of good, well-executed aspects to it as well. The characters were well put together and cast - Walt Goggins homage to Hudson was cool, and Brody was a good lead.
At the end - weren’t there boxes dropping from the sky, ie more predators?. The wiki article says they were more prey ie people. I saw it on a plane so the screen was tiny and maybe I mistook things.
The boxes dropped the skinny alien monster that chased the doctor through the woods. My visual clue was the bugs (the skinny alien monster was crawling with bugs, the boxes were crawling with the same bugs).