The Old Ways

1.5/4

Starring: Brigitte Kali Canales, Andrea Cortes, Julia Vera, Sal Lopez

Rated R (probably for Disturbing Images and Rituals, Language and Drug Use)

"The Old Ways" is a curious film.  The technical qualities are good and it generates real tension and dread.  But everything else is shit.  The actors can't act, the story is badly constructed and incoherent, and the director can't decide what he wants his film to be.  So it's hard to articulate what to make of it.

Christina (Canales) is a journalist traveling to Veracruz in search of a story and something more.  But she is kidnapped and held by a creepy old woman (Vera), a man of few words (Lopez) and her cousin Miranda (Cortes).  They believe that she is possessed by a demon.  Naturally, the savvy Christina doesn't believe a word of it, butyl even she can't ignore the truth.

The film gets off to a bad start.  There is virtually no set up.  After a brief flashback (which has less to do with the story than the filmmakers think), the film goes straight to when Christina is already being held captive.  There's nothing wrong with a sudden start to a film, as long as the director is able to use that disorientation in a creative and satisfying way.  That doesn't happen here.  It feels as if the first 20 minutes were lopped off with a meat cleaver in the editing room (a minute's worth of flashbacks inelegantly jammed into the film do not alleviate this).  That crucial time to allow the audience to form a bond with the central character is missing.

Not that a competent start would have helped much.  The problems with "The Old Ways" are far greater than a missing beginning.  A far greater impediment is the lead performer, Brigitte Kali Canales.  She can't act, and her inability to sell her character effectively tanks any hope of taking this movie seriously.  Her co-star, Andrea Cortes, is little better.  The scenes that feature the two of them on screen, which make up a majority of the film, bring the film to a dead halt.  Any tension that director Christopher Alender creates disappears as soon as they start talking.  They're so bad that at least one scene had me suppressing giggles.  Julia Vera and Sal Lopez are better, but sadly they have little to do.

Any good film needs a consistent vision to carry it through from beginning to end.  The director needs to have a firm idea of what he wants his film to be and then stick to it.  That doesn't happen here.  Alender throws everything at the screen and hopes something will stick.  It's a horror movie, an addiction story (Christina is a junkie), a search for redemption, self-discovery.  And probably more.  I won't claim that a talented and visionary filmmaker to combine all these elements into a coherent and satisfying film, but Alender isn't that filmmaker and this movie certainly isn't that film.  It's a mess.

Strange then, that the film can generate so much tension and dread.  The exorcism scenes are genuinely scary.  Alender is able to use sound and manipulative camera angles to generate a surprising amount of terror.  As worthless as the story is, the exorcism scenes do deliver the goods.  I was surprised at how freaked out I was.  Of course, once they end, the film plummets back down to tedium and nonsense.

What a shame.

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