Diablo's House

Brothers Ray and Calvin, veterans of the War in Afghanistan, are living down-and-out in Brownsville, Texas. Ray’s been fired from his job as a jail guard and Calvin is unemployed due to his sometimes erratic behavior caused by the titanium plate in his head. So Ray is receptive when Alvarez, a member of Ray’s old army squad, has a proposition. Alvarez works as a low level meth dealer and knows about a shipment sitting unguarded in a stash house right across the border. The drugs never went out after a Mexican drug kingpin was taken down. If Ray and Calvin agree to come along as backup they can earn $5,000 a piece. Things go smoothly at first: they break into the Mexican narco’s empty McMansion, find the drugs, but then bad-ass Conchita arrives. And soon after, three 18 year-old Mormon girls show up with their chaperon Abel. Then a caravan of Mexican army soldiers appears on the horizon. Ray and Alvarez corral everyone in the cellar. But when a Mexican soldier tosses a hand grenade and blows up the staircase they are trapped. While inspecting the cellar Ray discovers a hidden doorway which leads to a skinning room – where a meth head is diligently peeling flesh from a victim. They try to get information from the meth head but he’s mostly incoherent. Things are definitely getting weird. While searching for a way out, Alvarez finds a map with pictograms etched in stone, and realizes they are in an Aztec ruin. He then discovers a passageway which may or may not be an escape route. Ray and his two cohorts decide they have no choice but to head for an uncertain exit. But first, Ray doesn’t buy Abel’s story that he’s shepherding the three girls on a missionary pilgrimage for the cult-like OLDS (Original Latter Day Saints) Church – or that Conchita is their sponsor in Mexico. Ray coerces the truth from Abel – by choking him with a belt twisted around his neck. Abel confesses the girls are to be sacrificed at midnight, skinned alive by the “desollador” to feed the evil. So with trepidation, the group begins on a trek which leads them into a kind of twilight zone. In the mineshaft-like passageway they come upon artifacts of Mexico’s violent history and are assailed by booby traps, deranged meth heads and freakish creatures - fighting for their lives with guns, machetes, and even Mexican Revolution era cannon balls. Plenty of bloodshed accompanies them on their journey. Along the way a romance blossoms between Calvin and one of the Mormon girls. But will the desollador arrive to take her virgin skin? Eventually the survivors end up back in the skinning room as potential human sacrifices.