Writer: David Heavener
Director: David Heavener
A family that preys together, stays together
Evil Grave: Curse of the Maya (also misleadingly known as ”Dawn of the Living Dead”) is a low budget film from David Heavener. It’s very much a single person effort: Heavener not only wrote and directed it, he also stars. Unlike many solo filmmakers, Heavener has a track record, with IMDB listing a string of credits in all three roles. Judging by this film he’s a competent actor and director – but his writing is lousy.
Curse of the Maya is set at the very south of the USA near the border with Mexico. It begins with a mismatched couple moving into a dilapidated house. The couple are a doctor, Jeffrey Morgan (played very well by Joe Estevez) and his fiancee Renee (Amanda Bauman, who is competent if a little stiff).
Renee is not just Jeffrey’s fiancee, she’s also his patient. It turns out she’s a psych patient and ex addict who was institutionalised after the death of her daughter, a trauma from which she has still not recovered. For some inexplicable reason this back story seems to have granted her psychic powers and she starts to have visions. Through these convenient visions she discovers that the family who used to live in the house were murdered and their unburied corpses are not at rest. With a special Mayan feast day coming up they begin to stalk the land…
There’s actually some good stuff in this movie. The setting is unusual and atmospheric and the Mayan religion theme is interesting. I don’t know how much is genuine and how much is bunk, but it’s interesting. Acting and direction are superior to many low budget films.
The problem is the story telling. Pacing is just awful, with an overlong setup. The story also veers between lazy infodumps and pure confusion. I don’t mind a bit of hand waving when dealing with the supernatural but a lot of the pieces here just didn’t seem to fit together.
Heavener tries to make up for this with sex and violence. The eviscerations are unnecessarily gory and out of keeping with the almost psychedelic atmosphere of the rest of the film. There’s also a scene where one woman suddenly decides to strip for no reason other than to show her tits. Maybe this was meant to be a clever reference to Trash in Return of the Living Dead (1985), but in that film the strip was appropriate for both character and story; here it seems designed purely for trailer material.
In the same way that the beginning is slow, the end is also stretched out. After the main zombies are despatched we get a shock reveal (that we guessed ages ago) and some extra action that includes an unintentionally hilarious scene with Heavener. Then we get a coda which is totally unnecessary and makes little sense in the context of the rest of the film.
So overall Curse of the Maya falls into the ‘disappointing’ category. I like the atmosphere and using Mayan legend is an interesting alternative to Haitian voodoo. Unfortunately the storytelling is such a mess that the result is difficult to watch and impossible to recommend.