GRAVE HALLOWEEN (2013)

GRAVE HALLOWEEN (2013)

Label: Anchor Bay Entertainment 

Region Code: 1

Duration: 89 Minutes

Rating: R 

Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 

Video: Anamorphic Widescreen (1.78:1) 

Director: Steven R. Monroe 

Cast: Kaitlyn Leeb, Cassi Thomson, Graham Wardle, Hiro Kanagawa 

Here we have the very cute Kaitlyn Leeb playing Maiko, a transfer student in Japan whose birth mother took her own life in the infamous Suicide Forest in Japan. The tragedy has left a Maiko with a void and now she's assembled a crew of student documentary filmmakers to accompany her to the place where her mother died.  The Aokigahara forest at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan where thousands of people have committed suicide through the years.  

As it turns out this is not just a ceation of the film and is a very real place where 50-100 people commit suicide every year. At some point I watched a VICE video doc on the the suicide forest and it was quite a haunting place, so eerily quiet and littered with evidence of suicides past such as personal belongings and nooses hanging from the trees. So these kids get to the forest and start filming and we get a found-footage flavor right from the start but that pretty quickly falls to the side as the story plays out. They walk deeper into the forest towards the site where Maiko's mother committed suicide but before long before she begins  to see ghostly j-horror apparitions and the group make the acquaintance of a man (Hiro Kanagawa) who knows quite a bit about the forest - maybe a little too much. Additionally some jack-ass pranksters have followed the teens into the woods and they harass the doc crew and disrespect the dead - which is never good Karma. 

This one comes across as BLAIR WITCH PROJECT by way of the EVIL DEAD filtered through a j-horror prism and it's not awful but it certainly is not great either. Directed by Steven R. Monroe who brought us the I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE remake a few years ago but apparently has been busy making Syfy channels movies ever since - which is exactly what this is - a Syfy produced TV movie. 

For a Syfy movie is pretty damn watchable and the location used for the forest is serene, haunting and quite nice to watch. The acting is pretty decent  and there's a surprising amount of gore for a Syfy film. The effects are decent - the digital stuff towards the end was slightly better than the Roger Corman produced Syfy stuff. The make-up effects of the j-horror inspired ghosties was actually quite good if nothing original. Monroe does manage to create a certain amount of atmosphere but there's little suspense or tension and this is only just watchable and not a memorable experience.

Afterward I was wondering why this was titled GRAVE HALLOWEEN? I didn't catch it the first time around but apparently they are in the woods on Halloween night but it's not relevant to the film in anyway, just a marketing gimmick. 

The disc looks good - the cinematography is quite nice and the transfer is solid but there are no extras on the disc. Not something I would run out to own but maybe a rerun on Syfy on an off night wouldn't be the worst idea ever. Monroe is a competent filmmaker but these made for TV movies just are not doing it for me but this is infinitely better than 12 DISASTERS which he also directed for Syfy. 

DVD Review: THE DEAD (2010)

THE DEAD (2010) DVD

Label: Anchor Bay Entertainment

Release Date: February 14th 2012
Region Code: 1 NTSC
Rating: R

Duration: 105 mins

Video: 16:9 Widescreen (1.78:1)

Audio: English Dolby Digital 5.1

Director: Jonathan Ford, Howard J. Ford

Cast: Prince David Oseia, Rob Freeman

The Ford Brothers low-budget zombie flick THE DEAD (2010) starts off with a kick by throwing us right into the action alongside an American Air Force flight engineer named Lt. Brian Murphy (Rob Freeman) on board a cargo plane that's just evacuated the last white folk from an infected area of war-torn Africa. The already tense atmosphere on the plane escalates when a wounded passenger expires and returns undead and hungry for flesh causing a frenzy in the cargo hold, the ensuing commotion and the planes hasty take-off ends with the Cessna making an abrupt night time water landing just off the coast. Lt. Murphy is the lone survivor and finds himself washed-up on the coast surrounded by dozens of the shambling undead only just making it off the beach with his life. Inland he commandeers a beat-up pick-up truck making his way through the blistering savanna which is peppered with the undead. He soon encounters an African soldier named Daniel Dembee (Prince David Oseia) whose on his own journey having just returned to his village to find his wife has been devoured by the undead. His son having apparently escaped during an evacuation to a military base in the North. The two join forces seeming as two stand a better chance of fighting off the hordes of undead, Daniel in search of his missing son and Murphy looking to find a way off the continent.

Murphy and Daniel are men of few words with little conversation between them, the lack of dialogue may prove to be problematic from some alongside an odd pace, but while I can see it being a chore for some I rather enjoyed the film's languid pace, full of dread and atmosphere, this film oozes atmosphere. Don't get me wrong, while there's some sweet action set-pieces the film is a definitely a slow burn with a pretty threadbare plot, there's just not a lot of twist and turns here and that's fine. I would have liked to seen more interaction between the two soldiers but the film manages to convey an understanding between the two without resorting to dramatics with a communication short-hand. Both turn in solid performances but I felt that Freeman was a bit stiff at times, perhaps that was his character's military demeanor or post-traumatic shock but he just felt aloof and disconnected. The film does offer some commentary on black/white relations in Africa but it's not drilled-in, there's definitely potential for this have been an unnecessarily political film but the directors have wisely chosen to focus on what all great zombie films have done previously, zero in on the character's struggles in face of a zombie apocalypse.

Honestly, the film rarely offers anything new in the way of zombie tropes but the familiar elements seem fresh when juxtaposed against the harsh African enviorment, it's a great setting and makes for a visual feast; rugged mountainous areas, blistering sandy dunes, and sweltering grassy savannas all crawling with hordes of the undead. It's hard to believe it hasn't been done before, it's an inspired setting that's gorgeously shot with slow takes that revel in the scenery which never devolve into eye-shredding fast-editing.


The slow moving, shambling dead are in abundance here and I must say that I find them so much creepier than their fast-moving counterparts. The idea of a creeping, deliberate horde of hideous, flesh-chewing undead just disturbs me, no matter where you go they are constant and just nearly upon you. These are the zombies of George A. Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE, a wounded, wandering legion of dead-eyed ghouls. The effects are rendered quite effectively, there's some very nice make-up effects here both practical and CXGI. There's no shortage of gut-munching and skin-tearing carnage, it's great stuff. A particularly effective shambler at the top of the film is seen limping painfully, the bone protruding from it's knee in a compound fracture with a nerve shredding sound of broken bones grinding against each other as it walks, that one gave me the willies.  

There's not much I didn't enjoy about THE DEAD, this is a solid piece of zombie entertainment deserving of a wide audience. The unique setting, familiar yet welcome tropes and nasty bits of gore all come together to make for an entertaining watch, definitely one of the most solid zombie flicks I've seen in a few years.

Special features on the disc include a deleted scene, a brief behind-the-scenes featurette and audio commentary with the filmmakers who provide some  pretty entertaining insights about the film which I'm only listening to just now while typing this, it's fun stuff.


Special Features:
- Audio Commentary with Writer/Producer/Director Howard J Ford and Writer/Director of Photography/Co-Director Jon Ford

- Deleted Scene (1:42) 16:9

- Unearthing THE DEAD: Behind The Scenes (5:12) 16:9

Verdict: After months of avoiding clips, press and trailers for THE DEAD it was a genuine treat to watch it, finally. This ones a winner, a grim, Romero-esque zombie chiller with tons of glorious gutmunching and claustrophobic thrills set in the rugged but gorgeous African terrain, a very high recommend.  4 outta 5