Manos Brujas

Idea, Story, Plot: Good. Not original. Nothing groundbreaking or fresh, but still good and familiar.

The deep family secret.

The dark, occult background.

The creepy, haunting effects of the past coming back to mess with us in the present.

All good fuel for a possibly great fire.

Sadly that flame is extinguished very early on by unbelievable and unlikable characters, horrible technical skills, and annoying direction choices that just ruin the viewing experience.

The overused overhead drone shots to transition between environments are super annoying and obviously included as padding to lengthen the film. They serve no other purpose.

Unnecessary steady-cam rides around characters and rooms are very disorienting and again pointless as there are no interesting environments to show off here.

The washed out look to every scene, the obvious attempts to fix bad lighting with subpar filters in post production, and the lack of any real acting skill from anyone in the cast make this a very hard film to sit through.

I WANTED to like this film.

But it's just not possible.

The low budget/small production is not the issue. I enjoy a lot of films from back in the "shot on video" days of the late 90's and early 2000's. Minuscule budgets, no studio backing, promotion, or distribution. Literally films shot by fans on cheap video cameras, edited on vcr's, and dubbed and distributed out of a spare room in someone's house.

"Strange Things Happen At Sundown", "Rubao the Canibale", "The Necro Files"....these were entertaining and fun.

This film is just a slow, boring ride with characters you could care less about in an ugly environment.

This could have been so good in the hands of a competent crew. But sadly we got this instead.