I'm gonna have to back up for a moment and talk about the plot of "VooDoo" before I get to what makes it so special. Dani, a New Orleans resident, parties it up with cousin Stacy, a Los Angeles bohemian who enjoys pot and is in a rock band. During their relatively tame outings, Dani confesses that she just finished having an affair with a married man. The trouble is that the wife of the man in question is a voodoo priestess. This doesn't seem to matter throughout much of "VooDoo" since so much of the film is about how Dani and Stacy are doing everything but thinking about their problems. There are a few signs that trouble is on the way, like a laughably bad pre-opening-credits sequence that follows a mysterious killing spree perpetrated by (wait for it) a hammy, child-killing voodoo priestess. But there's really not much else of note going on plot-wise during the first 50 minutes or so, apart from a phone call from an ex-lover, and a warning from a palm-reader.
This is something of a problem since, as was previously mentioned, "VooDoo" is a very low-budget movie. Which is to say: the acting ain't great—Stewart's Southern accent is especially unfortunate; the production values are non-existent; there's a random cameo from porn star Ron Jeremy. I mean, arguably, the first 50 minutes of the film doesn't need any of those things since all it has to do to be effective is lull you into a sense of complacency before delivering its long sucker punch of a finale. Nevertheless, it is dispiriting to see a movie come so close but ultimately fail to say something—though arguably something stupid—about young women, and the way their identities are dependent on their sexual freedom. That theme is right there swimming on the surface the film, and it's the only emotional tether to the film's brutal, exhausting, preposterous, intoxicating nightmare-stew of a climax.
Before we get to the good stuff, I must file one major complaint: this movie's found footage premise barely makes sense. Dani wants to film her trip to the big city of Los Angeles. So, she's filming during perfunctory scenes of wide-eyed, tourist-y pleasure, like when Dani visits Grauman's Chinese Theatre and freaks out after she finds Marilyn Monroe's star on the Walk of Fame. And she's still filming when some weird hobo gawps at Dani and Stacy as they sunbathe ... OK, that one kind of makes sense. But Stacy keeps filming when Dani gets a mysterious phone call? And when they're smoking weed in the back of a cab? And when Dani's about to go to bed? Who does this and what am I supposed to think about the vacuity of these characters, beyond a generic understanding that they are mindless cyphers who have to move the film's high-concept premise along by hook or by crook?
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