I’ve always enjoyed a good pirate movie: bold swashbucklers stirring up trouble across the seas in pursuit of stolen riches, with a thrill of danger and anti-establishment freedom. Add a sharp screenplay and a star-studded cast, and the result is seafaring magic.

Cursed Waters secured an impressive lineup, perhaps too impressive for a script that struggles to give the seasoned professionals enough substance. Because of the increasingly familiar pay-to-play dynamic, the promise of names like Michael Pare, Robert LaSardo, Costas Mandylor, and Glenn Plummer, weakened when put up against lesser-known performers who were stiff, overacted and underdeveloped. It’s a shame when I want more filet mignon but must settle for ground beef.

With a plethora of additional talent that includes John Wells, BJ Mezek, Zachary Velasquez, Greg Tally, and Vernon Wells, I had high hopes the story would sail as smoothly as a battle across the open sea. Instead, it’s slow, muddled opening and confusing supernatural premise made Cursed Waters more damning than compelling to follow.

Plummer is “pirate king” Captain Bure, a runaway slave who takes his crew across what he believes to be Mexican waters, when they are attacked by an American Navy ship. As the back-and-forth cannon fire escalates to an almost irritating level, we are finally given reason to feel torn between good vs evil without knowing which is which. Not a terrible start, to be honest…minus the explosions that felt more like a backyard stunt than naval warfare.

After an engaging battle leaves John Wells’ Tiberius Shaw unconscious and waking in a jail cell, the story shifts into a series of flashbacks framed by a present-day court hearing over Shaw’s alleged crimes against America. His accent is polished, his cockiness precise, and his loyalty to his “merchant marine” family unwavering. In every gesture and inflection, he embodies the carefully crafted pirate archetype.

The audience is taken back to the events that led up to Shaw’s captivity which took shape after being shipwrecked (alongside the surviving navy men) on a remote island inhabited by a wickedly strange cult. As they travel through the forest with hesitancy, some pirates are picked off, snatched and outwardly slain by their nemesis in a Lord of the Flies manner. It’s quite campy to watch anyone and everyone being disposable in similar context to several opening characters portrayed by heavy hitters like Michael Pare, Robert LaSardo and Costas Mandylor. Wishing they would have stuck around a bit longer, it made sense that this lengthy ensemble became slowly eliminated as the constant combat raged on. I’ve accepted that and forged ahead.

After a brutal clash with several smoldering sirens introduces the creatures of the night, the plot grows murkier as the island’s strange commune gathers the stranded survivors for a huge feast. But what exactly is being served? As mutiny brews and power shifts, Cursed Waters splashes in with fog and fangs, but its script too often walks the plank.