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Horror     Rated R

In Spain, the American surfer Jason, his best friend and photographer Tomas Escaño and his girlfriend Lisa go shopping in a fair and while the couple is negotiating with a street vendor, Jason visits a dreadful store. Jason has a friction with the handicapped owner Malek and the man in a wheelchair offers an ancient board game called Mamba from the Spanish Inquisition period for free to excuse his behavior. Meanwhile, Detective Izar is investigating the death of a man that was skinned alive. When a heavy rain falls during a party on the beach, Jason joins Tomas, Lisa, his new acquaintance Erica Vargas, Pablo, Miguel and Elena to play the game. Erica reads the rules and explains that the winner would have his wish granted while the losers would be cursed to die the way described in the cards. Pablo is the first to lose and borrows Tomas' car to buy some beers. Miguel, Lisa, Elena and Tomas also lose, but the players stop the game when Detective Eric arrives and informs that Pablo has just died. When Miguel, Lisa and Elena also die, Jason researches the Mamba in the Internet and finds that the pieces and board had been made of skin and bones of the witch Mamba Masamba and the cards had been written with her blood and tears. Jason decides to finish the game with Erica to undo the curse.

Stars Mike Vogel (Texas Chainsaw Massacre '03, Cloverfield), and Eliza Dushku. Dushku is more known for her looks than acting ability, and while shes a decent actress, there good reason for that as shes much better at pouting her lips than using them to deliver great dialogue. Vogel however is a pretty good actor and give the best performance.

Very little, most people dies off-screen.

A brief oral sex scene, and an odd hospital scene with a women is semi topless, its hard to explain.

I've seen a lot of reviews of this movie lately in various magazines and websites, no doubt due to its star (although Vogel's role is much larger and more important than Dushku's) and the have been pretty mixed from saying it was awful, to decent, but very generic and predictable. I'd have to agree with the latter option. The killer board game sub-genre has been very over-used since the late 80's, it is however a decent storyline to go with, certainly not one of the worst ones, and usually provides for some good gore opportunity, which this one failed to deliver on. Still though, the script was fairly well written, with the dialogue at least making sense and no scenes seeming completely random, and the acting, while not mind-blowing, was better than many of the similar lower budget efforts. It's a skip-able movie, but if you see it airing on Sy-Fy, or the rental store has little else in stock, its not a bad way to spend your time.