Curse of the Mayans (2017) User Reviews

No wonder aliens don't visit the Earth...

[paul_haakonsen · 2/10 · 18 December 2019]

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.

And I'm a non diver

[vmalast · 2/10 · 2 September 2018]

I'm a non diver yet, I know about the use of rebreathers in cave diving. I know there is triple redundancy in safety as cave diving is extremely dangerous. These are the "best" cave divers????? The acting at times was okay. One can only do so much with horrific writing. If you're willing to drop your intelligence level to that of an intoxicated fruit fly, the film is ok.

SUCKS

[ziggyutah-29790 · 2/10 · 11 May 2019]

It could have been a good movie with a better script. Also the aliens were so stupid looking it could have been a comedy. I don't think saying the aliens were a joke is a spoiler even if they spoiled the movie.

Action adventure on a budget

[dubwize · 5/10 · 1 March 2018]

While this movie wasn't "great", I gave it 5 stars for mixing fact and fiction with liberal doses of Zachariah Sitchin and Eric Von Daniken stories of Mayan mythology intertwined the "Gods" of ancient Mayan codex with a dose of Nibiru and Annunaki lore for good measure.

Acting isn't bad and could have done more with substance in the storyline.

I enjoyed that they used the current resurgence of interest in ancient archeology as the basis for this adventure action film, as there is many many places left to reveal in the South American jungles still hidden from modern eyes. No matter how corny some may see this movie as, there is an interesting mix of truth and storytelling introducing Reptilian Archons (AKA evil mirrored Chitarauri) as the exo planetary dopplegangers of every human soul, laying dormant until released by bumbling hands.

Made by a better Director or with a bigger investment this movie could have been absolutely brilliant with a lot of potential. As it is, this is a fun adventure story that should not be thought about too deeply.

Well worth 5 stars for it's overall content and potential. Not for it's casting, acting or average editing and cinematography.

Had potential - wasted it brilliantly

[imdb-13014 · 2/10 · 4 March 2018]

First clue that this wasn't going to be a good one was the intro-sequence that took 10 mins...

To be fair - I thoroughly enjoyed how the cast switched from English to Spanish to Mayan (or something made up ?) seamlessly. No extraordinary accents, nothing so thick you couldn't make it out. Just a bunch of actors with great language skills !

When 4/5 of the movie has gone by the diving and action starts taking place...the CGI and effects were effective and surprisingly good but not enough to save the movie....

SPOILER ALERT Also an extreme logical blunder that really ruined it for me. WHY is it necessary to hold on to a timed explosive device to "fight them off as long as possible" ? Set it and forget it - run you fool ! Or in this case - swim.

Also - why collapse the walls and stuff when 3-4 of the aliens ALREADY has pass you by and you just MIGHT NEED to know more about the containment devices used ??? Seriously - some scriptwriter was sleeping during class and when writing the script...ruined even more of the movie for me.

Gave it a 2-star because of the actors doing a good job...perhaps even great given the material - hope to see more of them later !

Curse of the Bad script

[sebastianrodriguez-08751 · 1/10 · 25 March 2018]

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.

There's a reason it's only 2 stars

[jfost75 · 2/10 · 23 April 2019]

The best thing about this film was the Bolivian Angelina Jolie in short shorts. Basically some William katt impersonator takes a bunch of ppl into a jungle cave and unleashes some rubber lizard people who only show up in the last 5 minutes and never really do anything. This no-budget movie spends an hour getting u worked up, then tells u it's got to go home and leaves u hanging.

Set Continuity for diving was BAD

[mavisroad · 3/10 · 23 July 2018]

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.

You know what you're getting into

[auraluna8 · 5/10 · 16 April 2018]

If you even hit play on this film, you know what you're getting into. It's corny, bad acting, horrible plot, the usual B film about Mayan "noble savages." Weird combination of facts and new age theories as one other user mentioned. Good option if you know you're going to fall asleep, and if you manage to stay awake it's at least "so bad it's good"-ish.

Not bad just slow

[panCDCA · 5/10 · 14 July 2018]

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.

I really am enjoying this film.

[lutharpendragon · 8/10 · 13 June 2019]

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.

low budget scifi/mummy/tomb raiding vibes,worth a look

[jamiemacgregor-28461 · 7/10 · 25 October 2021]

I watch a bunch of low budget horror/Sci fi carnage. Love it. This one I didn't feel deserved the 3.3. The characters were believable and developed, though slow there wasn't that feeling over acting which often falls in the low budget films.

The underwater photography was excellent and overall cinematography was on par.

The movie built well but didn't finish as well as it could have. The "traditional" Mayan scenes didn't seem overly tacky either. I've seen so much worse with grades better. If you love the ancient/mummy/tomb raiding stuff it's worth a look.

Slow, lacks suspense, even the cave diving is anticlimactic

[ssfossilfree · 4/10 · 10 July 2020]

Not much action. Not much horror. Not much suspense. Some interesting locations, but the movie is slow, the plot weak, characters shallow. Minimal background and history. An hour in, little had happened. As another reviewer mentioned, they're supposed to be top expert divers. They don't use rebreathers. I was uncomfortable listening to them jabber in underwater caves when one would be conserving air. It should have been silent with captivating underwater footage. The dialogue foreshadows what's to come. I wanted to be drawn in more than I was. I ended up just wondering if I wanted to see the end or not. All the suspense was in the last 20 minutes. Super cheesy. It got so ridiculous at the end, I couldn't take it. Just another greedy white man with no respect for the culture of others. Skip this and watch The Abyss!

Snake Eyes

[nogodnomasters · 5/10 · 14 March 2018]

The Mayan curse is revealed....expedition to jungle...locate evil reptilian aliens from the Pleiades.

Carla Ortiz is our sexy low budget Angelina including bikini, tight clothes, sex scene, and side nudity in case you miss Lara. The space ship you see on the DVD cover is in the very last clip. Most of the film consisted of drama as they look for the hidden Mayan location.

The Pleiades is a group of stars. While they look bunched together, they are really many light years apart. The whole idea that one race evolved in the this group on separate planets and with a need to consume human souls light years away didn't make it in my book as something well thought out. When it comes to science fiction, I understand you have to give a mulligan or two, but their origin details were like a ridiculous episode of Ancient Astronauts.

Guide: F-word, brief sex, side nudity.

Weird scenes. Convenient plot

[Nena_icychilled · 1/10 · 10 March 2018]

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.

EL STINKER

[brettsurfer · 1/10 · 2 March 2018]

Like I said above low budget you and 20 friends could make this with some time extra taco bell money and every spare weekend you had for a year LMFAO

Scientology crap

[alexakesson · 1/10 · 26 March 2018]

Soooo bad. I thought Scientologists were rich, what a pile of crap.

Couldn't even get through it, terrible

[colawars-1 · 1/10 · 4 April 2018]

Just awful, simply awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful awful

13,000,000 peso's not DOLLARS which tranfers into 130,000 U.S. dollars

[brettsurfer · 1/10 · 2 March 2018]

LMFAO LMFAO lmfao if you feel like seeing a low budget and I do mean L O W budget flick with not great acting screenplay story etc..... ..... .... then this films for you LMFAO

Not India Jones

[post-39253 · 1/10 · 13 March 2018]

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.

Don't believe the low rating.

[theFIRSTfuckinGAGE · 9/10 · 26 June 2019]

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.

It could have been worse, or maybe better

[reallytorkedoff-87464 · 3/10 · 2 May 2018]

As with most movies, the last twenty minutes are where the good stuff happens and things are wrapped up. In this case, the last twenty minutes got a bit confused. There was a definite conclusion and it seemed to fit the rest of the story, but it had more potential and it left a lot of questions unanswered.

Things got weird in a hurry and then sort of slipped into another movie.

In any event, the acting was pretty decent and nobody got too melodramatic until the last few minutes. The scary guys were a bit weird and overdone. The ultimate ending was a bit odd and there was no explanation as to why the other players couldn't do whatever by themselves.

If you can see it for free, it's not too bad.

Made For TV ?

[thothgirl-43518 · 1/10 · 30 September 2021]

Actually a lot of TV movies are well made and fun and intriguing. This wasn't either of those. It wasn't exciting, lots of talking, no one sounded convincing. None of the characters are likable and I couldn't care less what happened to them. The action that finally took place in the last 10 minutes of the movie was ridiculous. Stay away or use it as background noise.

Sooo slooow

[kgribz · 3/10 · 3 June 2020]

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

Total waste of time

[debabratanag · 1/10 · 2 March 2018]

What a cr***y movie .... bad acting , direction , screenplay forget any special effects . What a waste of time !!