{"id":45939,"date":"2024-12-27T00:01:58","date_gmt":"2024-12-27T05:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=45939"},"modified":"2024-12-19T03:27:29","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T08:27:29","slug":"cursed-in-baja-2024-anchor-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/27\/cursed-in-baja-2024-anchor-bay\/","title":{"rendered":"Cursed in Baja (2024) [Anchor Bay]\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Now available on disc from Anchor Bay\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

An ex-lawman is hired to find a rich kid who may have been kidnapped in Mexico. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Written, directed, and starring Jeff Daniel Phillips, this film screams vanity project from start to finish. Vanity projects aren\u2019t always bad, but here the story is filled with clich\u00e9s and the direction is a bit lacking. The story has some interesting elements, but the majority of it feels very much like it\u2019s been seen before a bunch of times, some of them fairly recently. The story takes a lot of ideas that are very common to a film where someone goes to Mexico looking for someone else and the cartels, or at least drugs, are involved. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn\u2019t. Here, it mostly doesn\u2019t and perhaps it\u2019s because the same man did all the majority of the work here and needed a bit more of a sounding board or a partner willing to tell him when things didn\u2019t work. Overall, the story here is bland and predictable, making the fact that some seriously talented people being involved so frustrating.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The cast here is led by Phillips who looks lost at times and like he just doesn\u2019t care for way too many scenes. His character may be a confused, depressed, corrupted man who has very little to look forward to, but some passion, some emotion, some nuance would have made the performance at hand, the one that is central to everything, much more interesting. Joining him and stealing a few moments is Barbara Crampton who is thankfully always great and does good here. Her part was not exactly fascinating, but Crampton can make anything work. The rest of the cast here is either making odd acting decisions, lacking guidance, or plan not caring. A few scenes and line deliveries work well, but overall, the performances do not hit right.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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The cinematography by Keith Coleman is decent enough here, clearly done on a budget with a few odd ideas, some that work well and some that do not. The look of the film works for the story overall. The locations are interesting as well, but partially because they look like they may be in Los Angeles or San Diego County more than Mexico. Yes, this is nitpicking, but as it is, it felt off. <\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Cursed in Baja is a frustrating watch of a film with some good ideas here and there buried in clich\u00e9s and seen-before story beats. The acting is uneven and so is the cinematography (which is still one of the best parts). Honestly, the only reason to see this is for folks who absolutely must see everything one of the cast members is in and to see how Barbara Crampton keeps giving good performances no matter what.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Now available on disc from Anchor Bay\u00a0 An ex-lawman is hired to find a rich kid who may have been kidnapped in Mexico. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[240,477,1087],"class_list":["post-45939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collectors-den","tag-crime","tag-horror","tag-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45939"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":45940,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45939\/revisions\/45940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}