Seven Cemeteries

When it comes to a Trejo movie, one always knows that it can go either way, can be a great treat like Desperado or Bad Ass, or it can be some terrible , basically unwatchable garbage.

Seven Cemeteries is somewhere between the two, but closer to the latter. The few raving reviews out there are clearly fake, calling this magnificent and wonderful is ridiculous.

It is still watchable, if only barely. It's incredibly amateurish, as if a bunch of high school kids banded together with a phone as a camera and grabbed a few random guys from the local diner to goof around and call it a movie. There is hardly any story, the acting is basically non existent, dialogues and the script in general are extremely simplistic. The pacing is totally off, at least half of the very short runtime is spent with a slow build, with very little payoff in the end. Let's not even mention the "special effects"... Still, it has a little bit of charm, a few small chuckles. All I can say is that it's not entirely terrible.

In Texas, in a small town at the border of Mexico, the crime lord Abuelo (Sal Lopez) wants the ranch that belongs to Carmela (Samantha Ashley) and Matteo (Raul Casso), but the land belongs to their family for years and they refuse to sell. Abuelo stabs Matteo to death and tells Carmela that she has until the end of the day to deliver the ranch to him. Meanwhile, the old Santana Bravo (Danny Trejo) is released from prison on probation after serving twenty-eight years wrongly accused, and visits Matteo. He learns what happened to him and out of the blue, the corrupt Sheriff Jake (Ronnie Clark) arrives with his deputies and executes Bravo. A witch (Maria Canals-Barrera) brings his body to her cabin and resurrects him. Further, she tells Bravo that his blood can resurrect the dead. Bravo goes to seven cemeteries to bring back his old friends to defeat Abuelo and his men and protect Carmela and her ranch. The showdown between Bravo and Abuelo will begin.

"Seven Cemeteries" (2024) is a lame B-movie indicated for fans of Danny Trejo, who is too old to perform the badass he was in the past. The plot is full of cliches, and the humor does not work. There is no development of the one-dimensional characters or situations, the locations and the acting are very poor and the crew seems to be amateurish. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): Not Available.

After being released from prison, a man finds himself crossing a vicious drug lord in the area and makes a deal with a local witch to resurrect a posse of undead thug friends of his to help save the farm of a woman who's also crossed the same drug dealer and protect the land.

This was a fairly fun and enjoyable enough genre effort. The majority of the positives for this one rely on the strength of the supernatural tinges featured here that give it a somewhat wild time. The various factors in play putting the squeeze on the property where the house stands and the need for bringing in the different figures from the guy's past which comes about nicely giving this a decent enough storyline to work with. That we get the motivation for the resurrection and the different antics of how he's supposed to go about bringing his friends back to life gives everything a great time with a simple, straightforward story. That gives way to a slew of fun Action-style setpieces involving the war between the two sides starting to unfold. The initial confrontations with the zombified friends offering to help out give this some immensely fun setpieces featuring the inability to harm the undead minions which is only aided by a quirky sense of humor at the ineffectual nature of everything taking it to a wholly silly and cheesy tone. The final scenes making the sides pull out all the stops with plenty of strong setups in the race to get the house prepared, the battle outside where the overwhelming numbers force them underground, and the battle in the escape tunnels work nicely at bringing about some solid gore, heartwarming moments, and a fun resolution for a solid enough time here. There are some big issues here within this one. The main drawback with this one is the generally underwhelming sense of structure present that keeps this one meandering around instead of dealing with the main issue at the house. Featuring the journey to resurrect the zombified friends and bring them back which gives this some comedic features but also just drags along without much reason which manages to feel quite scattershot with how it plays out. It plays into the other factors for this one where the focus on comedy or Action in the middle section leaves such a lighthearted tone that nothing really feels dangerous or threatening so it's somewhat of an issue to get over with this one.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

First off I loved it I don't care what others say. This movie has it all I really hope Danny does another one for us with the hand. Also I think they should release this in the theaters as it might get a bigger fan base then they think. This is going down as a cult classic for sure and I know it will get a bigger following the longer it's out. This will be one of the movies I show people on movie night it really touched on so many different levels and is the first movie that really made me cry which is completely strange but the humor really is on point as well. I loved how at times when you think this movie can't get crazier it surprises you. I gave it a 10/10 everyone was fantastic in this movie and not at one point did I think I need to turn this off 😂

I like Danny Trejo. I think he's an awesome guy and a badass. But his movies are almost universally awful. This does not mean I don't own more than one of them.

So I didn't expect much from this one, and at the time I'm writing this the rating is 4.3 so that didn't bode well. However, I was surprised-pleased, actually-that it wasn't near as terrible as I'd prepared myself for. Yes, it's low budget and the sfx are poor. The plot is pretty thin but consistent. Trejo is Trejo and the other actors earn their meager paychecks. There's some humor and its short runtime keeps you from getting bored or overthinking. Seriously, I don't get the hate. It's not so bad if you have a sense of humor and like Ramirez movies.

And I must be the only one who recognizes that this is a zombie takeoff on "The Magnificent Seven." It gets an extra point just for that.