Manuel is returning to a small village in the Dominican Republic after some time living out of the country. A skeptic, he is unaware of what is about to happen to his family -- namely his young daughter Andrea. A trip to a cemetery in which she removes the cross from someone's grave unleashes a vengeful spirit bent on torture and mayhem upon her while revealing some hidden family secrets.
Not a bad concept in more ways than one, but this is a terrible film. It's as if the director and/or the writers had clumped together all of the clichés of other, more successful horror films and decided that this would be the key to its success. Snippets from THE EXORCIST, SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW, EVIL DEAD, ANGEL HEART, and THE RING, peek through for anyone who's seen them. But that's not too bad, really... films borrow from other films, it's just that it's done badly. There isn't a single performance that doesn't look like either it belonged in a sketch comedy or looked as if the actor was reading a teleprompter. Dominican Republic, a country of great beauty, could have set the stage for a great atmospheric film filled with the santeria folklore legend but remains wasted in cheese and overdone shock tactics, many which misfire. Anachronisms (the inclusion of yellow cabs) will only be noticed by a Dominican audience who knows they aren't used there and this will also take away even more authenticity. The revelation of a family secret which takes the story on a left turn, while interesting, remains stiff. The late addition of humor into the mix in order to lighten the mood works against it even more, especially near the end where scenes which are supposedly telling the main characters' final confrontation with the tortured spirit is not only un-scary but unintentionally funny. And then the running time: at 110 minutes the film seemed to stretch and stretch into forever... it took willpower for me to sit through it -- and I had come to it with an extremely open mind. A wasted opportunity, but Dominican cinema has to start somewhere and at least there is an honest intention to create something, even if didn't work.
Not a bad concept in more ways than one, but this is a terrible film. It's as if the director and/or the writers had clumped together all of the clichés of other, more successful horror films and decided that this would be the key to its success. Snippets from THE EXORCIST, SERPENT AND THE RAINBOW, EVIL DEAD, ANGEL HEART, and THE RING, peek through for anyone who's seen them. But that's not too bad, really... films borrow from other films, it's just that it's done badly. There isn't a single performance that doesn't look like either it belonged in a sketch comedy or looked as if the actor was reading a teleprompter. Dominican Republic, a country of great beauty, could have set the stage for a great atmospheric film filled with the santeria folklore legend but remains wasted in cheese and overdone shock tactics, many which misfire. Anachronisms (the inclusion of yellow cabs) will only be noticed by a Dominican audience who knows they aren't used there and this will also take away even more authenticity. The revelation of a family secret which takes the story on a left turn, while interesting, remains stiff. The late addition of humor into the mix in order to lighten the mood works against it even more, especially near the end where scenes which are supposedly telling the main characters' final confrontation with the tortured spirit is not only un-scary but unintentionally funny. And then the running time: at 110 minutes the film seemed to stretch and stretch into forever... it took willpower for me to sit through it -- and I had come to it with an extremely open mind. A wasted opportunity, but Dominican cinema has to start somewhere and at least there is an honest intention to create something, even if didn't work.
