The Curse of La Patasola

But to make a horror movie like this, even on homemade scale and underbudgeted, and with such headshaking and so inconcievably unconvincing actors talking dull dialouges in the car, the tent and around the camp fire, well youll be unfortunate if you find anything worse than this.

Stay away is the grumpy old mans advice.

This movie wasn't as bad as a lot of people make it out to be, the plot was interesting and I found myself wanted to see what was gonna happen next and kept me in agony, but sure it had many dumb decisions from the characters and that monster looked ridiculous, wasn't scary.

For a first time director, AJ Jones actually delivers a competent low budget horror experience with some refreshing concepts, even if it is irregular.

The film has a very rough start, exemplified by the obnoxious discussions between two seemingly annoying characters early on, but it picks up after some time and you actually warm up a little bit to these people. A lot of the conflict comes out of nowhere while some other elements are too obvious and in-your-face to take seriously, it certainly doesnt handle romance or interactions perfectly but theres an effort by the part of the actors and the director to make the material as effective as possible and while it doesnt fully work, I believe it is a worthwhile attempt that has redeeming values.

It mostly focuses on the characters relationships but the horror concepts are properly implemented into the story. While the horror element isnt missing, it is rather sparse and underplayed. The cinematography, special effects and production values are of quality for a limited production of this kind. Its not deficient when it comes to its technical aspects but it really needed a better script, or at least a more polished one.

Lets hope Jones makes more movies, as this was a somewhat riveting picture.

The filming is rather well done, considering the budget constraints. The actors are fine in their performances. The characters somewhat interesting. Unfortunately the plot quickly unfolds into an illogical mess and becomes absurd towards the end. And the ending is one of those completely irrational endings which seems completely unrelated to what was happening in the movie.

Good for those times one is completely bored and would rather watch a movie than watching the paint drying. And about as satisfying.

Right, well of course I hadn't even heard about this 2022 horror movie titled "The Curse of La Patasola" from writers AJ Jones and Shaun Mathis. But still, since it was a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I opted to sit down and watch it.

Needless to say that I wasn't harboring much of any high hopes from director AJ Jones given the movie's fairly low rating here on IMDb. But still, the movie might actually be something that entertained me, despite of having obviously not entertained many others before me.

Well, "The Curse of La Patasola" was a very, very bland and generic horror movie. So you are not in for a particularly grand horror experience when and if you sit down to watch this 2022 horror movie. The storyline seems to borrow somewhat from tales as La Llorona for example, which paints "The Curse of La Patasola" in a somewhat rip-off light.

Sure, I managed to sit through the entire movie, though I was only slightly entertained. The movie just didn't come off as being particularly interesting in terms of originality, storyline, characters and dialogue. It was all something that was very generic for the horror genre in general.

Visually then "The Curse of La Patasola" was okay. The movie doesn't make use of a lot of special effects, but the creature itself was adequate. And while it did count for something, it just wasn't enough to make up for the shortcomings and mediocrity that is "The Curse of La Patasola".

I wasn't familiar with the cast in the movie, and it was a shame that they didn't really have much to work with in terms of script, characters, dialogue and such. Of all the performances in the movie, it was Najah Bradley (playing Naomi) that stood out as the best and most memorable.

My rating of "The Curse of La Patasola" lands on a very generous three out of ten stars.