Uriah43 "Pilar Franco" (Adriana Catano) is a film maker who desperately wants an opportunity to showcase her abilities. So one day she sees a mystic on television named "Roque" (Roberto Montesinos) purporting to be able to cure people through spiritual means and she decides to film a documentary on him. Even though he is clearly a phony he figures he could use a little publicity so he agrees. Yet as it so happens the first patient that comes in named "Ana Marie" (Monika Munoz) has a serious problem which eventually leads both Pilar and Roque to a Brazilian high priestess who is very skillful in the black art of voodoo—and unlike Roque she is the real McCoy. Now rather than reveal any more of this film and risk spoiling it for those who haven't seen it I will just say that I honestly didn't expect too much from this movie. But after the first 10 minutes or so I realized that it was much better than I expected it to be as it combined touches of humor with a rather decent zombie plot. Additionally, the fact that both Monika Munoz and Adriana Catano were rather attractive certainly didn't hurt either. In any case, I liked this movie and therefore rate it as slightly above average.

Woodyanders Scared young Ana Maria (a sound and sympathetic performance by Monika Munoz) hires evil and powerful voodoo priestess Mana Luna (robustly played with wicked gusto by Nadia Rowinsky) to whip up a special potion to transform her abusive husband Antonio (a perfectly hateful Khotan) into a better man. Unfortunately, said potion transforms Antonio into a zombie instead. Ana Maria enlists the assistance of spunky aspiring reporter Pilar Franco (a nicely spirited turn by Adriana Catano) and amiable charlatan spiritual guide Roque (a marvelously jolly and charismatic performance by Roberto Montesinos) to resolve the situation. Writer/director Ricardo Islas relates the entertaining story at a brisk pace, stages the zombie attack scenes with flair, delivers plenty of amusing moments of good-natured humor (the constant banter between Pilar and Roque is quite snappy and often hilarious), and generates a good deal of tension and spooky atmosphere in the nightmarish last third. Moreover, it's acted with zest by a capable and engaging cast; the warm, funny, and lively chemistry between Catano and Montesinos in particular keeps the picture humming throughout. Mariana De Silva supplies a little extra spice as Roque's brash secretary. The Latino cultural aspect gives the movie its own neat distinctive flavor while the pertinent social commentary on such hot button issues as domestic violence and exploiting illegal immigrants as cheap slave labor provides an additional substantial dramatic punch. Both Christian Herrera's sharp cinematography and Aritz Villodas' melodic score are up to par. A fun and offbeat fright flick.

TdSmth5 A Latina documentary movie maker who can't sell her projects because they lack Latin flavor, in desperation decides to make a documentary on a corrupt Latin faith healer. Turns out he has a heart of gold and a real concern for his people. He can give great speeches on the hypocrisy of Latins who always aim for the white standard of beauty: blonde hair blue eyes. You get a sense where this is going...One of his customers is a woman who gets constantly beaten by her possessive husband. He can't and won't help her. She goes to another of these faith healers, a woman who practices Macumba. She gives her a potion to give to her husband. He drinks it and becomes a zombie. The reporter and the reformed charlatan who is now her sidekick in the investigation track down this voodoo priestess only to end up getting in trouble themselves. It all ends up in a violent showdown, Hollywood style.This movie is slow, performances are uneven, equipment used is not the best, lighting and camera-work are rather poor. The story though has a lot of potential and shows signs of intelligence, but also plenty of your standard college intro level minority politicking. I can't really recommend this movie unless you are the intended target audience for these sort of films that use some genre (zombie horror) to deliver a tired sociopolitical message. And the zombie horror doesn't really take up a lot of time either.

Matt Kracht If you're like me and can enjoy a drama that injects horror motifs, I think you might like this movie. Otherwise, it's probably going to be too talkative, with disappointing amounts of gore. To some extent, I might compare it to Dawn of the Dead (1978), my personal favorite of Romero's zombie saga (and one of my favorite movies ever). It's not nearly as good, but it has a lot of similarities: left-leaning political message, sparing use of zombies, more emphasis on human drama than gore, and a very raw, low budget look. Compare this to the Dawn remake, which streamlined away just about everything but the zombies and gore. If you're more a fan of the original than the remake, maybe you'll find something to like here. The big problem is that, despite how heavy-handed Romero's political and social commentary are, this movie is even more preachy and less subtle, with characters outright lecturing each other. Also, the gore is very low budget, looking a bit unimpressive. I've seen Troma movies that looked like they had a bigger budget than this movie. Still, if you can get past the faults, and you can withstand some preachy commentary, I think you might like this movie.The plot revolves around a Voodoo priestess raising a zombie horde from poor (and probably illegal) immigrants -- people that nobody will ever miss. When a battered wife, who had consulted the Voodoo priestess, seeks help from a feminist reporter and a Marxist con man with a heart of gold, the zombies and the priestess seek to kill them all, to keep the operation quiet. If this sounds a bit confused, cluttered, preachy, and silly, then yeah, you'd be right... but it's still fun.Admittedly, I'm being quite generous in giving it a 7/10, but the liberal political message resonated with me, and I liked the characters. The zombies were also somewhat creative, being an even mix of Haitian zombies and Romero ghouls, which might annoy some horror fans, who expect a movie to pick one style and stick with it. If you're looking for something higher budget, with good SFX and lots of gore, I'd suggest the Dawn of the Dead remake, instead of this. If you like this, you might also like Deadgirl, another rather talky, low budget drama that uses zombies and other horror motifs in order to deliver social criticism.