You know Jeff Daniel Phillips. Whether he’s playing Uncle Gilbert or a frantic warden in Rob Zombie’s filmography, he has a face made for the flickering light of a drive-in screen. In Cursed in Baja, Phillips steps behind the camera as writer and director, casting himself as Pirelli, an ex-lawman who looks like he hasn’t slept since the mid-90s and has spent every waking hour since carrying the collective sins of Los Angeles on his back.
Pirelli is tasked with a simple job: head south of the border, find the wayward heir to a massive L.A. fortune and bring him home. It’s the kind of setup that usually leads to a standard action flick, but Phillips isn’t interested in being predictable. Once Pirelli crosses into Baja, the movie takes a hard left turn into a hallucinatory, soul-searching nightmare.
This isn’t just a hunt for a rich kid; it’s an existential dive into the dirt. After all, the last person who took the job just up and faded away. And just when you think you’ve settled into a gritty neo-noir, the film throws a curveball: a Russian cult that worships the Chupacabra. Yes, you read that right. Pirelli has to navigate double-crosses, his own crumbling psyche and goat-sucking-cryptid zealots.
Even better, Barbara Crampton has a cameo.
Extras include a commentary track by Jeff Daniel Phillips and a making of. You can get it from MVD.
