Curse of the Mayans

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.

OK, it's been said by other reviewers, this is a low-budget film. But even for a low budget film you could make an effort to get basic details right. The diving scenes are completely wrong (mixing real cave diving footage involving sidemounted divers with the actors of this movie diving in backmounted recreational dive sets). It is supposed to be an exploration to an ancient site, but suddenly there is a perfect wooden stair when they surface at the end of the first cave dive. And there are cave lines in all dive scenes. So, these caves were dived before. During the briefing at the surface the dive leader says: "we come back as soon as we get down to a third of our tanks". Obviously that means you would die, as you can't make it back anymore (having used two thirds to go in). I could go on like this, but the point is clear. If you can't bother about such details as a director, than you might as well not bother doing a movie. However the worst is the end. It looks like they ran out of money and time (or perhaps the director got bored?) so they wrap up the movie with some bullshit narrative. I watched the whole movie until the last five minutes. That end brought my rating down from 4 stars to 1 star.

The movie is really good, you obviously know it doesn't have a Hollywood budget, but it's affects are good, acting it's top notch, and it's all around interesting AF! Plus some awesome visuals! I for one am seriously hoping for a part 2.

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.

I'm an hour into it, I know it started (first 5 to 10 minutes) with spotty acting, but then the actors started to really get into their roles. Decent damn acting,, interesting story, great camera/cinematography, and scenery. Now an hour in, the plot slows a little bit, and after that, I guess it gets a bit silly, along with the creatures...just wow, horrible special effects, they obviously did this on a nickle budget. But if you can imagine it with better budget. Well, that's why I liked it. I am not going to shame the movie, just because they didn't have enough money, especially when I enjoyed the first half, to three forth's of it.

I thought this movie going to be great. Unfortunately not. Why the hell did you hire someone that have a shaky hand? Like for the first few minutes, he keeps shaking the camera up and down.. you can use it on some scene but not every freaking scene.. i give up after watching the first few minutes..

A lot of awkward cut aways and edits in this movie. the "monsters" in this movie was the same scene in the dark that flashes on screen for 2 seconds. The acting felt forced and there was a lot of conveniences to the plot, example, oh random Jungle dweller ready to kill the team? LUCKILY one of our team members knows the guy and is in his debt. or when they find the "tombs" someone just so happens to turn the shiney skull the right way to unlock them... ALSO something that really pissed me off... was the Professor guy at the end was like "you have to kill them all, A BULLET TO THE HEAD will do it, but be careful they will look just like us, you will be able to recognize them from their snake eyes..." HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL THAT?? seriously how... does his research say that bullets work on these things???... and why would that work if back then in ancient Mayan times there were no guns.. that part did not make sense at all.