Xibalba

Low budget is not a curse untill it meets low scriptwriting, confusing shooting and editing, hilarious dialogues, sound probably recorded on Nokia 3310 and... well THAT acting. Actually this movie is quiet a masterpiece. You can show it to a film school students as an example how do NOT make movies.

It's definitely a SyFy Channel wannabe, but actually with a far better plot and cinematography. The biggest con is it takes forever to truly get to the action with the "aliens". While the build up is decent it lacks energy. The direction and story building is there but the actors for the most part seem to just go through the actions. The fact that the build up takes so long and you invest in watching for a payoff the payoff comes slate and leaves the movie open as if this were a pilot or the beginning of a series of movies and with the premise used. Sadly, because of that the ending was empty as a standalone.

Well, I found out that this movie was based on something with aliens and ancient Mayan lore, so I figured that it might actually have potential to be something worth watching.

Turns out that I was quite wrong. Wow, this movie was, and let me be bluntly honest here, god awful boring. There was literally nothing happening of any worth or interest happening throughout the entire movie, except for maybe the last five or ten minutes of the movie. And even that wasn't something you'd get worked up about.

This was essentially just following an expedition crew as they participated in what have to be the most boring expedition and spelunking ever.

The dialogue in the movie was fairly flaccid, but then again it did of course match the characters well enough, because the character gallery in this movie was just horrible. Every single character could essentially be replaced by a cardboard cutout - as they had the same personalities.

I will say that the creature - or more correctly - alien design was actually good, and that was the best part of the entire movie. But it was nowhere near enough for making up for all the rest of the movie, as it was one massive disappointing shortcoming.

Do no bother with spending your time, money or effort on this 2017 movie by director and writer Joaquin Rodriguez. Some of us suffered through this ordeal titled "Curse of the Mayans" (aka "Xibalba") so you don't have to.

I am rating this movie a generous two out of ten stars.

I'm a non diver yet, I know about the use of rebreathers in cave diving. I know there is triple redundancy in safety as cave diving is extremely dangerous. These are the "best" cave divers????? The acting at times was okay. One can only do so much with horrific writing. If you're willing to drop your intelligence level to that of an intoxicated fruit fly, the film is ok.

As with most movies, the last twenty minutes are where the good stuff happens and things are wrapped up. In this case, the last twenty minutes got a bit confused. There was a definite conclusion and it seemed to fit the rest of the story, but it had more potential and it left a lot of questions unanswered.

Things got weird in a hurry and then sort of slipped into another movie.

In any event, the acting was pretty decent and nobody got too melodramatic until the last few minutes. The scary guys were a bit weird and overdone. The ultimate ending was a bit odd and there was no explanation as to why the other players couldn't do whatever by themselves.

If you can see it for free, it's not too bad.