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.

The 2 cave divers you see diving in the real cave were diving with 2 side mount cylinders as well as a smaller cylinder (deco or bailout bottle) and were wearing normal scuba masks, one with helmet with 2 lights on the side (typical cave gear). Yet when you see ALL the divers come up, they are wearing full face masks, only have a single centre back mount tank. They also talk about being low on O2 (not air) and earlier discussed oxygen percentages they had left. It should have been how many PSI or Bar they had left. I'm sure they just took some stock footage of cave divers and put the rest in, but even non divers can tell the difference in gear.

Literally nothing happens for the first 1hr 10. And it doesn't really improve the movie when it does.

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.