2004’s Dawn of the Living Dead (Also known as Curse of the Maya, also known as “Evil Grave”) is…an experience. I think thats fair to say and puts me in a bit of an unusual position really because I honestly cant figure out if this is one of the WORST movies i’ve ever sat through, or some kind of weird work of counter culture genius in the same vein as Neil Breen or Barry J. Gillis. While the film itself is a TOTAL mixed bag of weirdness and monotony, it’s the director David Heavener who’s really caught my interest in this whole thing because. Well…he’s a character.

Not only does he have his own self styled paywalled broadcast network that charges $6 a month to discuss fundamendalist evangelical christian news and the upcoming end of days. But this is unusual (well…unusual to some of you, anyone who’s hung around the church long enough will NOT be surprised) because Heaveners kind of duel wielding at this point, marketing himself as a crusader and preacher, while also maintaining a strong anti PC stance. Before moving into evangelical christian broadcasting he previously ran shows like “David Heavener Live” where he did serialised specials talking about how the Deep state is coming to take your land, or whether radicalised christians are a threat to the Hollywood system.

He currently has a series called Xposed. I mean, David Heavaner Investigates, where he looks at bizarre claims of acts of god and investigates if they really ARE acts of god. The item that caught my eye was this image featured on his IMDB listing for his live shows basically trying to appeal to a christian alt-right audience. Now; in my opinion, a grift is a grift, if someone wants to send this guy $6 a month so he can tell them that illegal immigrants and the deep state are stealing their pens, thats between them and Jesus. I personally think it only adds to the echo chamber of bilge thats bought most of the major high performing economic countries to their knees over the last 10 years+ But thats just my opinion. What Im trying to get at here is that Heavener gives the impression of wanting to be an auteur.

And I mention these things because a third pillar of Heaveners career is that he makes exploitation films…which…is a bit of a contrast to his other projects…Dawn of the living dead wasn’t an outlier, the vast majority of his film career has been spent making Horror movies, Sci fi films and action thrillers, some of which have had a Christian edge. Now if anyone can explain to me how someone can simultaneously be an exploitation film maker and a latter day evangelical preacher AND a member of the anti PC brigade who believes the deep state is trying to kill us all, I’d be fascinated to chat. But im getting off track here.

I do need to make it clear at this point before we get to business, this film has a LOT of racist language used towards mexicans. And I personally don’t believe it’s being used solely for the purpose of character development here. I just wanted to flag that up right off the bat because, while some people would say that was ME being politically correct. I’d prefer to frame it as, me not being an arsehole and needlessly upsetting people for no good reason. So if you are bothered by that kind of thing, don’t bother with this movie it really isnt worth your time, and im going to try and keep any rhetoric to a minimum.

The film opens near the mexican border as we’re introduced to Jeffrey and Renee. A couple that have recently purchased a property on ebay with the aim of escaping the rush of the city to start a new life out in the desert. When they arrive at the house, its in serious disrepair, in fact it looks like whoever lived their previously left in a hurry. Renee isnt phased by the awfulness mind, in fact, the idea of a fixer upper delights her and we’re then treated to an extended montage of Jeffrey doing light repair (largely painting and replacing rotted wood) while Renee wanders around the house to get a better grasp on her surroundings.

While exploring the grounds Renee finds an old bust of a persons head in the grass and decides to bring it into the house, this seems to start something as it becomes apparent that something appears to be watching them from the scrubland. That night when the pair go to bed, Renee has a strange nightmare that a girl she saw in a photograph in one of the rooms is calling to her. She wakes up in a cold sweat and gets Jeffrey to scout the house out, but he finds nothing. The next day Renee finds a hidden room in the house with some toys and playthings, which in turn starts her off hearing even more childrens voices calling out to her, but she cant pinpoint from exactly where.

After getting a bit overwhelmed by the voices Renee heads out into the desert to explore the scrubland and its here that shes set upon by guy in overalls who has learning difficulties. He’s fended off however by non other than David Heavener himself who plays a strong, quiet loner type who speaks with a vague heir of pseudo wisdom Michael. Michael helps maintain wind turbines in the area and the guy he fended off is his co-worker. Renee almost immediately swoons for the great galoop. But shes in a committed relationship and engaged to Jeffrey, so while finding Michael UTTERLY irresistible (it’s worth reiterating here that David Heavener wrote, directed, produced and is now starring as the hunk a dunk of this picture) She has to break away to get home. But she does invite Michael back to the house for dinner.

And it’s over dinner that the tone of the film kind of fundamentally changes. It’s revealed that the reason Jeff and Renee left the city to go and live on the border was because Renee had only just gotten out of a psychiatric hospital. A few years prior her daughter was killed by a hit and run driver while in the care of a foster family because Renee is an addict. Her daughters death triggered a full psychological breakdown that led to 2 years of recovery under Jeffrey, the pair started having a relationship and when she was discharged from the service and released from the hospital the pair thought retreating to a quite house away from all the hussle and bustle might be a good way to work on Renees recovery.

Shes a manic depressive with paranoid tendencies that has to be constantly medicated or she goes psychotic. And wouldnt you know it shes recently stopped taking her meds, and WOULDNT YOU KNOW IT shes also started drinking a lot more booze than before AND WOULDNT YOU KNOW IT! Jeffreys also a bit controlling!…Seriously this dinner just drops all that on the audience within a 3-6 minute window…basically he reminds renee that she loses control of reality if she doesnt stay medicated and gets quite upset when she starts being assertive about not being arsed about taking her medication leading to clear signs that theres trouble in paradise.

Anyway; after that Renee asks Michael about the house, he informs her that it was basically a stopgap for illegal immigrants crossing the border, they’d stay at the house for a few days rest up, eat, drink and get well enough to make it to the nearest city to set up (which…apparently is established as being 400 miles away sooo…I dunno about that.) he also repeatedly refers to mexicans here under a couple of different racial slurs which NOONE pulls him up on. So I just have to assume all the characters in this film are big racists on top of all being quite unlikable people. Anyway, post dinner Jeff heads out and Renee and Michael stay up flirting outrageously with each other (again David wrote this for himself) before the pair go their separate ways.

The next day things get even more interesting as Renee starts to see phantoms all over the ranch, and she also nearly gets drown while tending a pond near the house where a hand comes out of the water and tries to drag her in. Renee is adamant that something DEFINITELY grabbed her, but when Jeffrey gets to her, the first thing he asks is if shes back on her medication, Renee says she isnt which leads Jeffrey to question if she really was attacked by lake zombies or if her DIAGNOSED psychosis (which she IS supposed to medicated for) might have potentially caused her to manifest accidentally slipping into a pond and getting tangled in some weeds as something trying to pull her into the pond. Renee is furious that Joe doesnt believe her and stomps off.

A short time passes and in a scene I cant show you due to nudity, Renee decides to have a bath to try and calm down, only for a hand to pull her under the water. At which point, she is dragged into a vivid flashback in which, the phantoms shes seen wandering around the ranch are all gunned down, drown or just straight up murdered. Including a little girl who ran to hide in the secret toy room that Renee found near the beginning of the film.

When Renee wakes up, she’s on a sofa in the hidden toy room and after moving some of the toys she finds a dried blood splatter on the floor in the exact spot the girl in the flashback was shot to death. Renee goes to tell Jeffrey who simply reiterates that he cant take anything she says seriously until she’s back on her medications. Oh. did I mention that for some reason its also now 5am?. The editing of the film implied the bath scene took place maybe an hour or two after the pond sequence so I was guessing it was mid to late afternoon when the flashback sequence took place. But no, apparently 12-15 hours has passed since the previous scene…also; what was Jeffrey doing awake and fully dressed at 5am!? Ugh…

Anyway in an attempt to prove that she isnt crazy, Renee begs Jeffrey to go check a cornfield thats at the bottom of the ranch’s fields as that’ll prove that these people who got murdered actually existed. Jeffrey humours her and when Renee gets to the spot where the cornfield was, it’s all gone. Jeffrey reiterates that the best thing they can do right now is abandon the renovation work and get Renee back to the city to re-evaluate her mental state and review her medications (which again; given whats going on and that non of the other characters know of an incoming mexican ghost zombie invasion…seems reasonable.)

Later that night Jeffrey comes home drunk and attempts to sexually assault Renee. This causes some strange editing where it gives the impression that Renee dissassociates from the attack and goes into her own mind where a fantasy plays out of her making passionate love to michael. When the deed is done, Renee realises that it WASNT in fact a dissassociated dream and that she really has had sex with Michael who plays things very cooler than thou. And it’s here really that the main drive of the film FINALLY kicks in (WELL over 45 minutes into this hour and 25 minute movie)

Renee begins to research Mayan culture, given that Michael has repeatedly mentioned something about mexicans bringing Vood doo stuff over the border *sigh* and its while researching the Mayan culture that she realises whats going on. Apparently when someone dies a very specific set of rituals need to take place in order to purify the body ready for it’s journey to whatever the mayan version of Heaven is. Because this family were executed without being given the proper burial rituals after 3 days of being dead, they have been resurrected as flesh eating zombies. They then have 5 days of restless hungry zombie mode with which to get someone to perform the official burial rituals otherwise they go to the Mayan version of Hell.

Armed with this information Renee is then set on performing the rituals and releasing these spirits from their pain. Unfortunately; the zombies don’t realise this is what Renee is up to and instead begin to attack the house and people in the surrounding area. In a final 20 minutes that honestly just left me with more questions than answers. Will Renee be able to complete the ritual?, Is Michael all he appears? And will Jeffrey make it to the end credits? All this and a HELL of a lot more will be answered if you take a chance on “Dawn of the living dead”.

So; right off the bat it needs to be said that this script is SO PADDED. Its honestly more stuffing than movie. A lot of the film is dedicated to Renee roaming around the scrubland surrounding the house, long sequences exploring the house itself or cyclical discussions about if the zombie ghost thingies are real, Renee’s medication issue and Mayan culture. There are entire subplots I missed out of my synopsis just because they literally add NOTHING to the film apart from an excuse to get the first gore scene into the film at 38 MINUTES into the run time and to possibly drop more mexican slurs into the mix.

The pacing is all over the place and I think the script was trying to play clever with all the “Is it all in Renee’s head or are there REALLY zombies” angle, but because that plotline isn’t developed much beyond Jeffrey telling her to take her meds and Michael telling her she doesn’t need to take her meds, there’s never any sense that her medication is the reason why all this weird supernatural stuff is happening. It’s like the film WANTS you to think thats an option, while doing everything in its power to make that CLEARLY not what’s going on. We’ll spend 4-6 minutes info dumping our two main characters’ entire backstory over lasagna, then waste 10 minutes with Renee just opening boxes and doors around the house. It’s so uneven. It could have maybe gotten away with it had they played up the psychological elements a bit more, made it a bit more suspenseful or tried to create more of a sense of unease. But theres just…non of that.

The continuity is boned too, characters are introduced and then vanish until they’re convenient, time is constantly being played around with (it goes from night to day almost instantly in places,It can be broad daylight at 5am in this thing) the whole plot about mayan burials way too convoluted honestly, Theres a subplot about weirdo racist bounty hunters that’s just randomly inserted throughout the 2nd act and ultimately adds nothing to the main plot. Michael establishes that the house is near a wind farm which is never utilised bought up, or mentioned again outside of michael giving two passing references to it being his job to maintain them…a job he MUST be doing pretty poorly as he spends most of the film hanging around with Renee…hell; even the end plot twist is SUPER predictable (I guessed it 20 minutes in) and is riddled with continuity issues, it’s just a bit of a mess honestly.

The film this most reminded me of from a Script perspective was “The Day Time Ended” because both films DO have interesting and weird moments that happen within them and I could see someone really enjoying this thing. But the gulfs of total inactivity between those weird moments really tested my patience. This is one of those movies where you’ll sit through 15 minutes of total nothingness to be rewarded with 3 minutes of just…utter oddness. And the worst part here is I cant really describe the oddness to you because A: out of context it wont seem *That* odd and B: a lot of the oddness is tied to spoiler heavy scenes that would take way too long to explain and would ruin the surprise. But trust me when I say that there are moments in this thing that left me full on snort laughing at just how absurd things got so quickly. Whether this was intentional or not is very much up for debate. I personally think David Sincerely wrote this script believing it to be a genuine horror movie. I certainly don’t believe this is satire.

Add in totally underwhelming dialogue that borders and occasionally steps over the line into melodrama campy goodness, a total lack of consistency for our core characters, seriously the intelligence of these people fluctuates wildly. The biggest oddity being that throughout the film the sun is shown to turn purple and split into 5 miniature suns and NOONE says ANYTHING until the very end of the movie and everyone just kind of goes, “Ohhhh thats what that was..” theres barely 1 act, letalone 3 when it comes to act structuring, scenes just kind of melt into each other and because of the experimental editing sometimes cuts will be used mid scene to show hours or even days worth of time passage. Which again, would be great if they were playing this up as a psychological horror…but they arnt.

The script for this is FAR from great. With long dragging sections, no narrative cohesion, poorly written and defined characters, an over reliance on racist language, frankly bizarre scenes that I think were supposed to illicit horror, but instead only made me burst out laughing, and dialogue thats bordering on the inept. I honestly don’t know if I love or hate this thing. It’s left me with SO much confliction and I feel a revisit in the near future is almost a certainty.

As mentioned this film was produced, written, directed and stars David Heavener. He has 29 directing credits and 28 writing credits. He initially started his career working in Action, horror and the occasional scifi movie, before branching out into Christian action and christian drama movies and nowadays he predominantly works on his own streaming platform doing investigative journalism on faith, but he does still churn out the occasional horror or christian action film on the side. With credits including “Prime Target” and “Twisted Justice”.

On the direction front. Im actually not too down on it truthfully, Davids style of direction seems to predominantly be grounded in wide angle shots, fish eye shots and handheld work. Which…well it isnt my cup of tea, but it does leave an ultimately distinct mark, with this being shot on film as well it just gives the picture a little bit more of a boost, just a tiny push that takes it over the line from being something that could have looked cheap being shot on digital video tape to something that, I’d say in the macrocosm of low budget horror actually looks quite respectable. The horror scenes themselves are quite well handled and while it would have been nice to see more gore in these shots (they’re not nearly bloody enough for me) I think they’re handled about as well as they could be. I just wish there was more of them and more blood honestly.
There are nitpicks I’d can pull up, his Day for night work is frankly atrocious, some of the worst i’ve seen in a good while. Some of the choices on how shots are framed aren’t exactly the most professional in the world and the directional choice to shoot some of the scenes handheld to me felt a bit overly unnecessary. Its almost nausea inducing in places, particularly in the day for night sequences where, at points, it can quite literally look like someones just shaking a camera pointed at the colour blue.

I wasnt entirely thrilled with his direction of the cast either. I felt real awkwardness with them. A lot of the pacing beats between line deliveries are off, meaning sometimes there are strong pauses between actors while they’re having a very basic conversation, it all just has an heir of uncertainty about it with only Davids performance itself being relatively rock solid. Which, I assume is down to the fact he actually took the time to not make himself look too much like a doofus in the edit. Set spaces are utilised quite well which is commendable, but I feel like he’s tried to make up for a lack of directorial vision on the location footage by just using funky lenses and colours to try and distract from the fact he just didnt really know what to do to make miles of scrubland look all that interesting.

From a cine perspective. Its…inconsistent. Shots quite often lack focus within the composition barring shots that are only focussing on one person. As mentioned, the choice to shoot a lot of the film handheld is problematic resulting in shaky and often (in my opinion) unprofessional looking shots. The sequences are pretty poorly constructed, they in some cases use smash cuts to try and show passage of time and play with what’s real and whats not. But its so half hearted in committing to that type of play it results in disorienting cuts that,rather than making me wonder what’s real and what isn’t, it ultimately left me wondering if there’d been a mistake in the edit resulting in a jump anywhere between a few minutes to a couple of days within the narrative. Theres a limited range of actual shot types on display and a lot of the heavy lifting is seemingly being done with limited CG effects, strange colour grading or odd lens choices.

To me? It feels like a film where the director got the rushes into the edit and realised that the film looked quite flat and dull. So he shot some materials with weird lenses and then played around in post till it looked more interesting at the cost of its coherency. It also has to be stressed that theres a near total lack of lighting in this film, you say chiaroscuro. I say lack of budget. I counted at least half a dozen scenes in this thing that were underlit and underexposed to the point where I thought it was maybe part of the narrative, like maybe the underlighting was the phantom zombies doing something…but no. this film just doesn’t have very good (if any) lighting direction and minimal lighting in general.

Performance wise; Jesus christ. So right off the bat I feel like Joe Estevez was a miscast. I like Joe, I think he’s a fine enough actor and he seems like a super cool guy in real life. But at the time this film was being made, and at that point in his career. Of ALL the roles you could present him with, “Toxic partner whos an alcoholic and into sexual assault” would be the FURTHEST thing away from what i’d cast Joe as. He’s just too cuddly for that role. Its just all kinds of wrong and works against what that characters supposed to be. I don’t believe his performance as a doctor, I don’t believe his performance as a toxic partner. It’s just…wrong! So wrong!

David’s turn as Michael Richards in this is hilarious, I feel like when he was writing the script for this, his thought process decided he wanted the character he played to be wise, charismatic, charming he wanted the character to be the love of every woman and the envy of every man basically your typical mary sue. But then he realised that it probably wasn’t going to go down well to have this amazing and loved character who gets to snog and act bang Amanda Bauman also be completely faultless to the point he ends up saving the day and also by sheer chance be the same guy who wrote and directed it. So in order to play down what feels like a guys attempt to just have a shot at kissing attractive women and playing the hero for 90 minutes they rush out a 15 minute plot twist ending to give him a MASSIVE fault that’s completely out of line with anything that’s happened in the film up to that point. His character in this is ridiculous and whenever he was on screen I literally couldn’t help but stifle a laugh at his performance.

Amanda Bauman by contrast kind of ends up stuck between these two guys and I’d say she is VERY representative of the middle ground for this film. I feel her casting was appropriate, and I think Davids written her to be a flawed but understandable character, I think Amanda plays it well. Is it a perfect performance? Absolutely not, there’s a few moments where she falters and…in honesty the material (to me at least) is pretty bad so she’s working with a bad hand. But, she does amicably. Shes decent enough. So i’d say thats an absolute win. The rest of the cast are awful. Most of them have no lines and the ones that do feel like they fell out of an early 2000’s Troma movie. And not a good early 2000’s Troma movie. Lines are delivered stiffly with little to no animation, It’s a bit of a shit show honestly, which was a dissapoitnment.

And finally; the soundtrack. And it’s…Alright. And I feel bad for saying that because I personally don’t think it’s alright; I think it’s generic. But objectively I cant really find any flaw in it within the context of it being a low budget horror movie. It’s pan pipey string and acoustic midi fodder. Not the worst i’ve ever heard. Not enthralling or interesting but it DOES work to help punctuate the horror elements of this quite well. What I will say is the sound recording for the cast is atrocious, if anymore than 1 person is in the scene the audio goes WAY off balance. Wind is in most outdoor recordings and the diegetic sound has been dubbed on from stock effects that don’t match what’s happening on screen and havent been balanced against the soundtrack of the actors meaning frequently doors gently being shut are louder than actor dialogue and waters overwhelmingly loud. its a poor audio experience in all honesty.

Dawn of the living dead was released on DVD in 2005 by Lighthouse DVD distribution, the same Lighthouse DVD that released “Stranger – A soulmate of chucky ” only a year prior. My guess is, much like stranger Lighthouse took a look “Curse of the Maya” as a title and went “We’ll lose money if we put it out as that!” Then they noticed that Zack Snyder had a “Dawn of the Dead remake recently out and they thought “Hey! Lets just do that!” before slapping a new title over the film and kicking it out the door. At least this one DOES technically have zombies in…Anyway, no extra features, just a scene select and my assumption is it went out of print at the same time Lighthouse DVD was dissolved in 2016 because since then it hasn’t been reissued and there’s no bluray release. While there were a lot of mixed to bad things to say about this one. I dunno, I kind of would like to see it cleaned up for a bluray release, just purely for the MST3K factor of it clearly being PERFECT for a good riff!

I still havent fully decided whether I like Dawn of the living dead or not, and I think it’ll take a LOT of time and rewatches to finally let my feelings settle. The only thing I know for sure is that this is NOT a good movie by any stretch of the imagination in my opinion. But deciding whether its an enjoyably bad movie or just a bad film is, to me, very much up for debate. I cant say I hated it, though there is a lot to dislike. Nor can I say I loved it despite it having the weird quirky charms it does have. The scripts all over the place, the direction and cine are a mess, the cast are miscast and the soundtracks paper thin. But there just something oddy endearing about it… With it being cheap I’d say grab it; its definitely something different. I wont endorse it but I think by a hairs BREADTH. I’d recommend it…ugh. I feel so dirty Im going to go wash my mouth out…see you next week.

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/curse-of-the-maya/