Grave Halloween (UK DVD)
Gareth Jones
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Starring Kaitlyn Leeb, Cassi Thomson, Dejan Loyola, Graham Wardle, Jesse Wheeler, Tom Stevens
Directed by Steven R. Monroe
Distributed by Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment
Ah, vengeful Asian ghosts – can ever we get enough of them? Director Steven R. Monroe hopes not as he dishes up a forest full in Grave Halloween. Set in the real-life Aokigahara Forest in Japan (a strange cultural hotbed of self-termination), Grave Halloween follows a bunch of American students studying nearby who set off to the forest in order to perform a ritual that should lay to rest the tortured spirit of the mother of one of their number. The girl in question, Maiko (Leeb – looking nowhere near as convincingly Asian as the child playing her in flashbacks is), lost her mother to suicide when she was a young girl, and was then adopted by American parents.
Seeking to reconnect with her heritage, she is thus back in Japan with the only physical reminder that she has of her mother – a box of trinkets that she received, supposedly left to her by her late parent.
Accompanying Maiko on her trip are a group of various friends, including film students looking to make a documentary of the ritual, and a further uninvited group of stereotypical party dudes who take none of their activity within the forest seriously. Pretty soon, the theft of a watch from one of the suicide sites by the aforementioned part dudes angers the restless spirits residing in the forest, and the blood begins to flow. Throw in a couple of cops who take care of the forest, and are sick to death of disrespectful tourists, and a wizened old local man and you have a recipe for some ghostly fun, right?
Well… almost. As your typical ‘twenty-something “teens” in peril’ movie, Grave Halloween mostly achieves what it sets out to do via some good use of location (even if completely fails to capitalise on the disturbing nature of its setting), and especially its effectively grim menagerie of menacing ghosts. There’s a surprising amount of convincing gore to be had, most impressive being a particularly nasty sequence involving one unfortunate being quartered by living trees. On the flipside the characters are generally nondescript – usually only making their mark on you when being particularly annoying – and the presentation rarely feels anything beyond the typical Syfy Channel fare amongst which it holds root. Monroe attempts to spice things up a little by chucking in found footage elements using the film crew’s camera, but it merely serves to add to the unambitious feel of the entire affair; a ‘been there, done that’ element that merely adds to the sense of familiarity and really isn’t necessary at all.
The history of Maiko and her mother feels muddled – strange flashback sequences presenting a foreboding element that makes you constantly question why on Earth she’d want to have anything to do with her spirit, restless or not – but does lead to a nice twist in the payoff that unfortunately may be missed, or misunderstood, if you’ve already given up on caring by then. Which would be entirely forgivable, frankly, given the threadbare script. There’s also a secondary twist, quite integral to the story, that is so cack-handed and difficult to believe that it’s a wonder that anyone involved saw fit to keep it in there.
Still, the cast do what they can with the thin script and Monroe sets up a number of tense and creepy set pieces, relishing the manner in which the spirits of the forest toy with and segregate their prey before moving in for the kill. Grave Halloween isn’t great – hell, it’s barely even ‘good’ – but it does what it needs to, ultimately. It’s a relatively inoffensive, if overly familiar, slice of horror sporting a smattering of creepy moments. If anything, at least it’s a step up from Monroe’s odious 2013 effort, I Spit On Your Grave 2. Then again, that’s faint praise indeed.
Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment’s UK DVD release of Grave Halloween is a barebones one. Just like the film, there’s nothing special to see here, folks.
Special Features
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Special Features
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