Available on digital platforms from 9th November, Voodoo Apocalypse is a tribute to the 70s grindhouse movies, it’s packed with cheesy dialogue, cheap gags, badly choreographed fights, terrible special effects, plenty of swearing and a splattering of extreme violence, and as the strap-line says it’s got cops, kung fu, masked wrestlers and zombies!
The film uses a grainy 70s film look and has music, moustaches and wardrobes to match. It starts with the flip flop wearing cop White Chocolate (Sergio G. Ramos) sent to Mexico to track down fellow cop gone AWOL Charlie Vargas (Jose J. Ramallo) and he finds him in Mexico wrestling as a masked lucha libra wrestler.
Vargas returns to Los Angeles and under the orders of shouty boss, Lieutenant Blackman, they are to go after the drug trafficker and murderer of Vargas’ former partner, Jimmy Vanilla (Victor Hubara), and so ensues the hunt for Jimmy who turns out to be Papa Voodoo capable of turning people into zombies through playing his rock music. This of course cannot happen until Vargas and White Chocolate become kung fu masters.
If that all sounds a little hard to follow, the film doesn’t help matters with its difficult to pick up dialogue and it’s not entirely clear whether this is down to deliberately awful Spanish / Mexican accents or just plainly inaudible speech.
Written, directed and performed by a collaborative team, it feels like a film made by a group of friends out to enjoy themselves. If you’re looking for a complete escape from the usual Hollywood blockbuster then you could be interested by this B-movie tribute, but whilst the gags resemble what might go into an outrageous grindhouse style movie, overall it lacks a cohesive magic spell.
Film: Voodoo Apocalypse
Run time: 1hr 35 min
Director: Vasni Ramos
Stars: Jose J. Ramallo, Sergio G. Ramos, Jorge Galvan, Victor Hubara
Genre: Action / Comedy / Horror
Rated: 15
Rating: 2/5
The Language of Film 