Horror Movie Review: Maya (1989)

Director Marcello Avallone’s second film (his other being Specters) follows the 80’s Italian horror movie playbook to a tee. So, expect a baffling plot, awful dubbing and bad acting, some really egregious gore, plenty of female nudity, and far too much sexual violence.

All of that sums up Maya, except all of that probably makes it sound more exciting than it is.

Peter Phelps stars as Peter, an American ex-pat living in a small Mexican village where he spends his days having sex with Jahaira (Mariangélica Ayala), hitting on every other woman that comes into the bar where he is supposed to be working, and gambling on violent feats of strength. If you’re thinking that he doesn’t sound like the kind of lead you could get behind, you don’t even know the half of it. Peter is incredibly unlikable.

Part of that comes from the fact that he just doesn’t seem to care about anyone but himself. His friend Solomon (William Berger) is murdered at a local Mayan temple and he couldn’t care less. Solomon’s daughter, Lisa (Mariella Valentini) comes looking for answers and he’s almost immediately hitting on her. Which would be bad if she was the only woman he was trying to sleep with, but she’s not, and all of this is done without a care for Jahaira’s feelings.

He’s a douchebag, and sadly, we have to spend most of the film with him as the mystery around Solomon’s death deepens and more people end up dead, often violently. Does this spate of murders have something to do with the legend of a Mayan demon and sacrifices that took place a long time ago?

The answer is yes, as Maya does take the form of a supernatural horror but does a horrible job of telling a story that moves from A to B to C and so on. Not only that, it’s got massive pacing issues and two tricks to get the viewers attention, neither of which are admirable.

The first is the constant sexual advances and violence that just about every woman has to put up with in this film. It would just about be bearable if it was saying something, but it’s not. Instead, here are some dudes trying to feel up a woman, getting angry when told to stop, and then trying to rape her. Isn’t that just fun to watch? If they’re not being sexually assaulted and abused, they’re nude or getting killed in some horrible way. In the case of Mariangélica Ayala’s Jahaira, its both and while her death scene is harrowing and effective, the effects are cheap and it just feels so mean-spirited.

Which sums up the whole experience as the writing comes from such a negative place, it makes everyone unlikable and everything feel grubby. Again, this could have worked from a corruptible angle, but that’s the kind of nuanced writing this film can’t handle. Instead, it’s cheap supernatural trash with an ending that is naturally baffling.