A story that's too fascinating to pass by...

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Blistering performances.

The American friends David (Guy Bracca), Craig (Brian Bianchini) and Andrew (Daniel Lennox) travel on vacation in Bangkok, Thailand, to celebrate the last bachelor days of Andrew that is going to marry his fiancée Heather (Christina Wieber). They hire the gorgeous Thai photographer Sita (Sheny Andrea) to sightsee Bangkok with them. A couple of days later, Andrew tells them that they must return to Los Angeles and while going to the airport, they see Sita being dragged out from a river. Once in Los Angeles, the infection on the face of the yuppie David grows and while in a meeting, he vomits on the table and the other executives. Meanwhile Craig is stabbed by a stranger in an alley near his home and is interned in the hospital with a serious infection. When Andrew and Heather go to a Thai restaurant to have dinner, an old lady gives an amulet to David for the protection of Heather. When Heather is possessed by a fiend, David calls the shaman and the woman tells him that the trio of friends has been cursed by witchcraft and only a bridge ceremony may exorcise the evil spirit. But Andrew must tell first the truth about the tragic trip to Thailand."The Black Magic" is flawed, has a reasonable acting only, a weak conclusion but it is not as bad as indicated in IMDb User Rating. The screenplay is not original and has at least two great flaws: how could David leave a hospital and go to the house of his secretary feeling so bad? Further, how could Heather stab David and not be arrested? Considering that this is a low-budget movie, I found it a good entertainment. My vote is six.Title (Brazil): "Jogos Fatais" ("Fatal Games")

The Black Magic starts as soon to be married Andrew (Daniel Lennox) & his two best friends Craig (Brian Bianchni) & David (Guy Bracca) are enjoying a holiday in Bangkok in Thailand, however the trip turns to tragedy & the three friends arrive back back home in the States looking to get on with their respective lives. Unfortunately all three begin to suffer various problems, from being fired to getting stabbed to having terrifying nightmares as an evil force out for revenge starts to ruin their lives & ultimately tries to take them...This American, Thai & Indonesian co-production was co-written & directed by Marc-Ivan O'Gorman & one has to say it's unusual to find a horror flick on the IMDb that doesn't have at least ten comments, in fact it's clear that horror is easily the most commented upon genre on the IMDb & I would guess that The Blck Magic is therefore a pretty obscure film & I have have to say that it pretty much deserves to be obscure & hopefully for the general public it will stay that way. The script by O'Gorman & producer Asun Mawardi takes itself very seriously & is probably best described as a supernatural horror thriller in the style of recent Japanese horror like Ringu (1998) & Ju-On: The Grudge (2003) with ghostly Asian women & wronged spirits out for some sort of revenge. Unfortunately The Black magic feels very much like an American attempt at recreating the success of these Japanese horror films & as such sticks a load of annoying American teens as the stars, sets some of it in Bangkok while the rest in America & pretty much uses all the clichés you know & are throughly bored of. From possession to righting a wrong before a ghost can rest in peace it's all here just without any of the scares or entertainment you would hope for. It's really boring & very slow, it's extremely predictable & there isn't even an explanation as to why Sita comes back from the dead.Director O'Gorman does alright & at least the film looks competent throughout although there's zero scares, there's no style & no atmosphere. The shots of Bangkok look like they came from a holiday program or travelogue & are surprisingly dull & flat as is the whole film really. According to the MPAA section on the IMDb homepage for The Black Magic this was rated 'R' for strong violence, language, some sexuality & drug use, well it's go the language & drug use but there's no nudity & as for strong violence I didn't see any. A chicken has it's head cut off in a sacrifice, someone is stabbed in the stomach & someone is repeatedly stabbed in the throat at the end otherwise there's nothing here to get excited about. There's a touch of cheap looking CGI computer effects work as well.Technically the film is reasonably well made & better than a lot of low budget horror crap, unfortunately the story & film still suck though. The acting is OK, nothing brilliant but nothing too bad.The Black Magic is a poor attempt at a Japanese styled supernatural horror thriller which is a genre I don't like anyway so this was never likely to impress me, give this a miss & watch the American remake of The Ring (2002) instead as it's much, much better.

This is a very low-budget horror movie, so you can't really judge it on the same level as Citizen Kane or anything. Nonetheless, it's not a good movie. Like many of its ilk, it suffers from poor acting, but the combination of bad acting and an unoriginal script does it in. A big part of the problem is that there is basically no characterization of any of the main characters, and they aren't very interesting on their own merits. The plot as a whole is nothing we haven't seen hundreds of times before, and the movie spends a lot of time building up to a big reveal which is obvious from the first several minutes of the movie.Genre fans will likely be disappointed by the level of the special effects here, which largely consist of a few stabs to the abdomen and a dash of bargain-basement CGI.It did have some bright points, though. I thought the cinematography showed a good deal of talent, and the film overall was more visually imaginative than I expected it to be. One scene (involving a pillow in the hospital) was mildly creepy, and if the movie had stuck more closely to these lines it probably would have been a better movie.