Set in gritty Oxnard, Calif., the film boasts an almost entirely Latino cast of characters - a welcome gesture toward a huge filmgoing demographic that rarely gets to see itself onscreen - while smart casting and production design help capture the flavor of the environs with only moderate deployment of cultural stereotypes. Kicking off with a high-school graduation, “The Marked Ones” centers on likably lunkheaded teenage buddies Jesse (Andrew Jacobs) and Hector (Jorge Diaz), as well as Jesse’s tag-along relative Marisol (Gabrielle Walsh). At this point, the conventions and limitations of the found-footage horror film are almost as well worn and cliched as those of horror pics at large: “Put down the camera, stupid!” has now probably been shouted at just as many screens as “Don’t go down into the basement!” (Look for “Tilt your viewfinder 20 degrees to the left!” to finally supplant “Look out behind you!” within the present decade.) Appropriately, the hapless heroes of “The Marked Ones” never put down the camera even as they venture into dark basements, or struggle to start a stalled car, or split up in the middle of a haunted mansion - and it’s to the credit of the film’s primary cast that these bits of genre-appropriate stupidity generate more laughs than groans.
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