Well, this is it. The last hurrah of Megan and Abby Graves.
Main Cast: Clare Grant, Jillian Murray
Director: Brian Pulido
Each year there are movies produced that are never seen by the public. Their content is considered too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences. This is one of those films.
Or not. Okay, I guess technically since it’s part of the After Dark Horrorfest it is considered “too graphic, too disturbing, too shocking for general audiences.” But is it really? Not so much.
Megan (Clare Grant) and Abby (Jillian Murray) Graves are having one last hurrah before Megan goes off to work in New York. The Arizona-based comic book-reading, heavy metal-listening sisters go off in search of the world’s largest thermometer, but instead get lost and wind up in Unity, where the big attraction is a self-guided tour of the old haunted Skull City Mine. There’s a live blacksmith demonstration “every hour on the hour”, but only a few minutes into their walkabout, the sisters learn the anvil isn’t the only thing this blacksmith pounds his hammer into. He don’t care much for tourists, neither, as becomes very obvious when the girls watch him beat a man to death outside the building they’ve wandered into.
WTF?
Surprise surprise, the Skull City Mine is a front for a group of homicidal maniacs. So obviously THE GRAVES is all kinds of original and interesting.
Okay, okay, to be fair it does have its moments. Bill Moseley plays one of the Skull City killers and, although he has some horrible dialogue, he makes the best of it and turns in the best performance of the movie. Tony Todd plays Reverend Stockton, the brains of Unity, and while Todd really gets deep into the character of an evangelical preacher, hamming it up, flailing about and whatnot, the overdub on his voice is so horrible it kills the performance for me.
Speaking of detriments to the success of the movie, writer/director/producer Brian Pulido says in his commentary track that they opted for CGI blood spatters instead of the real thing because of time budget. But holy jeez, they spent, according to Pulido, almost ¾ of a million on a fly wrangler. Use CGI for the flies and spend the money on real fake blood, because I don’t care how accurate the trajectory of the blood splatter is, it’s still obviously CGI and, much like Tony Todd’s overdubs, KILLS the movie.
It’s not a BAD movie, it’s just badly done. I can forgive a predictable story, and it is predictable; as soon as the Graves show up in Unity and Reverend Stockton appears a few minutes later, you can see the rest of this movie play out in the blink of an eye. I can forgive some mediocre acting. I know Grant and Murray have done their share of horror, but, well… And I can even forgive some bad dialogue, which THE GRAVES has in spades. But when you put all this together in one movie, then throw in the horrible overdub of the most recognizable voice in the entire picture, plus that wretchedly cheap CGI blood, the experience just gets more and more painful as it goes. The acting isn’t “SyFy original movie” bad, but the effects and dialogue are pushing it.
I think the thing that drives me the craziest about this movie is the obvious love of horror films and the horror genre in general. Pulido’s clearly a man who likes to surround himself with the trappings of his favorite genre. But sometimes that devotion, in some hands, can come across a bit . . . needy, a little too “hey, look at me, I like horror, watch this blood splatter, WOW isn’t that cool?” Well, no, it isn’t. It’s CGI for one, and it’s just a blood splatter. I think by now horror fans are used to it. What else you got?
The preacher is the most evil character, but also the most deluded because he believes he’s serving God. Hmm. Yeah, not cutting it, been done to death.
I’m just not feeling it. The love of the genre is obvious, but it’s like a little dog barking at your heels. It’s a follower’s devotion, not a true mature respect. There’s a huge difference. I get the sense from THE GRAVES that, if one visits Pulido’s house, he can’t wait to show you his horror collection, because he just loves the stuff so much.
I’ve said it before, and unfortunately will say it again I’m sure, but if you have to tell people how “different” and “weird” you are, chances are you’re not that different or weird, you’re just needy.
THE GRAVES wants to be that horror movie that horror fans can turn to when they need a fix, but in the end all it succeeds in doing is reminding those people who turn their noses up at horror just why it is they don’t respect the genre and “don’t watch films like that”.
Read more 8 Films to Die For reviews
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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