Bad Voodoo Review – The horror of an escaped convict worthy of a ghost train at an amusement park | film

WI meet horror heroine Abigail (Christina Moody) several years after losing her two daughters in a car accident. One fateful night, a police officer visits Abigail to tell her that she might want to lock up on an extra note: he has a report of some escaped convicts in the area, and indeed there are no prizes for guessing that criminals will soon show up at Abigail’s house. What happens next at least has the virtue of being a somewhat original plot, with twists and turns that are as surprising as they are implausible.

It would be too spoilery to say exactly how the “voodoo” in the title is used, but suffice it to say that it blends elements drawn from actual Haitian voodoo along with the voodoo doll tradition popularized by Western popular culture. However, the performances are the film’s real weakness: most of the acting is of the kind you might encounter in an escape room or ghost train experience at an amusement park. The dialogue isn’t much of a shocker either, a mixture of soap opera melodrama (“You don’t always have to be on his side!”) and crime procedural clichés (“You gave up that job a long time ago, didn’t you?”). Shot choices don’t help: One scene of a woman running for her life running downstairs was filmed in a manner reminiscent of Mrs. Doubtfire running to turn off the oven.

This may seem difficult, but it is a type of creative choice that pulls the audience out of the world of the story. And as for any cultural sensitivities around the depiction of voodoo…on the whole, this project is so out of touch with reality that it might look like outrage over a child’s drawing.