I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "What In The Blazes Did I Just Watch?"

The Sacred (2009)

I was looking forward to this story... yeah yeah there's the usual college students you want dead almost right away, but there's also supposed zombies, Native American curses, and a mysterious 'island' (in the Florida swamps) so how could they go wrong? By being massively stupid about it, that's how. This movie stunk on a major level. It didn't even try to be historical (even the 'Native American' tribe they use never existed) and the zombie action was so sparse it certainly didn't make sitting through this garbage worth it. And how convenient that the clean cut college kids turned out to be... well, let's just get through this.

This was so horrible, apparently no one wanted to keep around pictures of it, much less the answer to the most important question and the final mind breaker of the movie... but first - this movie was supposedly shot with a budget of $10,000 according to one source. Right now I have to call BS on this - that wouldn't even buy one actor, much less make a movie. And this had a lot of people in it. Extras, but still, they're still going to want to get paid for this mess. So either this is crap or somebody dropped off a few zeros. And the premise is:

In 1709 The Ulawachi tribe (I looked everywhere for any sign that this was a real tribe, but nope.) used a small island somewhere in the Florida swamps as a punishing ground for the worst people in their tribe (Yeah, Native Americans have their share of psychos too.). They take them there, tie them up, then a Shaman puts five carved sticks in the ground which supposedly gives the island itself the power to punish them, apparently by having the dead victims rise up to rip apart the guilty one. This is pretty shaky from the start, although having zombies in the first five minutes was promising. And misleading. We have a long wait before we see this kind of excitement again. Instead it's a lot of wandering around, finding the old campsite, and my favorite, one finding a projector, reels, and a screen (but no cameras) and takes them outside to watch them. In daylight. With no electricity to run the projector. Which turns itself on and off at will. Oh there is a whole lot of duh coming up.

Five college students (that seeming to be the minimum of victims in most horror flicks) are doing a research paper on the Ulawachi tribe and want to visit this island, which actually has a campsite built on it. It has been closed since 1968, when a similar group of victims - um I mean students - were slaughtered there. They ask locals (rather crassly, none of these kids are remotely likeable and no they're not kids either) for a guide. One finally does it for the money, but will only take them near the island, not directly to it. He provides a little backstory, mostly what's already been mentioned here, and says he cannot go to the island himself as he has done too many bad things in his life. Smart. The five are left with two dubious canoes and he advises them to get out before dark. Of course this wouldn't be a movie if these students had a complete brain between them all - every warning is scoffed at or just ignored. So they're gonna die. How? 

Well, one brainiac figures that the five totems they find are a warning - which they ignore. The smart girl (Why is there always only one?) Miranda finds a stone with the words, "This is a place of judgement where no sin will be forgotten no matter how small. Beware anyone with sins in their past as they will find justice on these grounds." In other words, every person in the world is screwed on this island, as only Jesus himself is exempt from this criteria. But even Miranda, supposedly smart, just thinks this is cute, not something to worry about. Massive duh and it gets worse. One guy finds the sacred 'sticks' and another, although not being a Shaman, sticks them in the ground. This shouldn't be a problem because one, it's daylight and two, these are just kids, right? Well, one this movie is stupid and two, apparently our clean-cut college kids are anything but. Now normally it would probably be illicit sex, drugs and rock and roll, right? Oh no, the movie wanted something stupidly more obvious to make it a 'just' punishment for these guys... and they die in this order:

1. Jared (the supposed smart one) - as soon as the sticks are planted he starts hearing voices. He runs around in circles but the voices are all around him and suddenly we are in his head reliving his sin. This brainiac is a twisted evil little monkey who liked to capture little boys, keep them in his basement to 'play' (I don't want to know what that means.) and when one (or more I don't know) doesn't do what he wants, he kills him. And dumps him somewhere, the movie wasn't clear on that. So after that tasteless memory he desperately tries to pull up the sticks - they don't budge. And the dead little boy (nice zombie makeup on the kid - for the supposed budget) comes up behind him and twists his head around. One down.

2. Pete (the square jawed popular one) - starts to see dead animals and animal parts everywhere. He is confronted by a large black dog. He knows this dog, Thor. See, nice and clean Pete, when he was a kid decided to show off in front of a friend and he took stones and killed Thor, who was chained to a tree and couldn't get away. Real nice kid. He escapes for a bit and rejoins the group, but stupidly goes off by himself and the nice dead doggie (they really didn't try zombie dog, probably just as well) rips his throat out. Two down.

3. Jackie (the blonde bimbo, Pete's girlfriend) - becomes aware of pains on her back. One of the others thoughtlessly points out that it looks like she has nasty acne. Nice. The sores become larger and spread. Miranda tries to comfort her as she becomes even worse and is in great pain. And we hear of her 'sin'. She worked in some sort of hospital and was in charge of an old man whose blood was 'allergic to everything.' Pete visited her while she was working and since they got busy in the supply room, she forgot the old man's medicine (the only one he wasn't allergic to I guess). She rushed to give it to him and he vomits, disgusting her and making her yell at him. He then breaks out in horrific sores and dies in agony. She had given him the wrong medicine and she knew it but gave it to him anyway. And wasn't punished since the place was also being investigated for other boo boos (never trust those places) so they just moved her to a different place. She dies, a bloody mess. Too bad, I would have like to have seen an old zombie covered in sores... Three down.

4. Zach (the wealthy douchebag) - Zach is in the privileged class. He has both a ton of money plus is a major shareholder in a high dollar company. Why is he in college exactly? His sin - when daddy died, Zach was into fast money and bad company. He squandered a whole bunch of daddy's money and finally mom (or stepmom, he kept calling her Gia) decided to cut him off. She later tells him she really loves him and wants him to know the true value of earning a dollar. He responds by smothering her with a pillow. Then he finds out at the will reading (I take it there were no CSI's in his city) that of the three kids he was given the bulk of the estate. She really did love him. So we get a zombie Gia coming after him which he manages to evade for a short time before she dispatches him too. Which leaves...

5. Miranda (the smart girl) - Miranda has been watching the horror of seeing her friends die, but since their canoes mysteriously disappeared can't escape. As dark descends on the island she is confronted by the zombie bodies of her friends - they say it was her idea and so it was her fault they were dead. Come again? They were killed for what they - you know, forget it. She runs forever, gets near the water and there is the whole (or a lot of) the Ulawachi zombie tribe (What did they all do - was their sin being Native American?) and she jumps in the water, finding a log and floating down the river. She is picked up in a canoe by the paid guide in the beginning of the movie and sigh it's over. Until he steers her right back to the island. She wakes up - I guess, they're not real clear about anything in this movie and she's right back on the island. She falls on her back screaming 'What do you want from me?' Hands come up from the ground to grab her. The end.

 Wait, the end? What the hell did she do? I looked everywhere for the answer to this one. There isn't one. Unless it's because you have to be Jesus Christ not to be killed by this island the only explanation (and that was a viewer guess) was that she brought them all there fully knowing what would happen to them. Uh, no, that's not possible. She didn't hear about the massacre until the guide told the group, she found the stone on the island, and how the hell could she know what the other four had done in their pasts? Plus since no one with sin survives, it would have been suicide on her part. So that was a massive duh to end a stupid movie, one of those 'twists' they put at the end that are becoming so old, if a movie ends on a good note, we're actually shocked. In other words, unless you want to see Native American zombies (briefly) or puzzle this out yourself, don't bother. It's a total waste of $10,000 (Where the hell did they get that figure anyway?).