The Curse of the Mayans (2017) poster

The Curse of the Mayans (2017)

Rating:

aka Xibalba


Mexico. 2017.

Crew

Director – Joaquin Rodriguez, Screenplay – Alberto Haggar & Joaquin Rodrigeuz, Producer – Carlos Calderon, Photography – Juan Castillero, Music – Torrey Desmond Rogers, Visual Effects – Giant Propeller (Supervisor – Marek Jeso), Special Effects – Fernado Legarreta Antuna, Production Design – Luis Alberto Nuñez. Production Company – Lanczyner Films/Three Great Lights Films.

Cast

Carla Ortiz (Danielle Noble), Steve Wilcox (Dr Allan Green), Mark Tacher (Many), Olga Fonda (Eli), Luis Felipe Tojar (El Brujo), Mauricio Martinez (Jorge), Liam White (Greg Miller)


Plot

Dr Allan Green, who works on behalf of a wealthy backer, offers expert diver Danielle Noble a good deal of money to conduct a dive in the jungles of the Yucatan. Danielle assembles her team and they trek into the jungle where Green guides them to a Mayan temple. Diving into the sunken depths of the temple, they discover ancient computers left by aliens, but this serves to awaken the lizard-like aliens themselves.


The Curse of the Mayans/Xibalba was the fourth film for Mexican director Joaquin Rodriguez. Rodriguez has previously directed 666: The Beginning of the End (2009), Time Warrior (2012) and the non-genre Decdencia (2012).

The Curse of the Mayans well and truly situates itself in crackpot fringe theory territory. Within the space of three opening title cards it manages to get in mention of 2012 Mayan End of the World prophecies, alien lizard people and the Ancient Astronauts theories of Erich von Daniken (where major historical landmarks such as The Pyramids, Stonehenge etc were built by visiting aliens). Not that any of this makes for a bad film in itself – Stargate (1994) did fairly well with a similar sort of mix.

Thereafter, The Curse of the Mayans drops all its weird crackpot theories until near the end of the film. Instead, it sets out along the lines of B-budget Adventure Film with Steve Wilcox assembling a team of divers and setting out on an expedition through the jungle, along with assorted encounters with bandits. Once we arrive at the temple, there are various underwater diving scenes as the party venture into the temple, although these have their plausibility undone by seeing guide ropes everywhere as the team venture into the supposedly unexplored temple. It is in these scenes, I was beginning to think that the film might actually turn out to be something semi-reasonable as it certainly is making an effort to realistically ground itself.

However, things promptly head rapidly downhill to the ridiculous film we seem to be in for at the outset. The divers enter the inner chamber and discover a series of cool-looking stone computers. However, they are then attacked by the aliens, which look like standard reptilian human monsters. After all the promise we get about alien contact and artefacts, the film ends as no more than a standard one about the group being pursued around a series of caves by monsters.


Trailer here


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