The Graves

I found this movie to have potential, but it's badly executed. The story is interesting with a mining town that has its people sacrifice strangers for a supernatural entity to feed on it. I wish the movie would go into the history of the mining place and why they need to sacrifice people for the entity. They briefly said it before the climax of the movie. Unfortunately, the movie isn't interesting at all because it's rather predictable and does have that much in the story. Most of the movie is just the two sisters getting chased by the villains and sometimes fighting back. It does have some suspenseful moments in those scenes, but nothing too big or interesting happens during it. Even the movie feels like it keeps going on for a little bit too long and is not that enjoyable. The climax itself is underwhelming and is anticlimactic on how it ends. The characters aren't really the worst, but aren't that interesting at all. I found the special effects to be a mixed bag throughout the movie. The way the entity feast on the deceased body looks pretty terrifying, but the CGI effects look really bad. Gore effects are also a mixed bag with some have pretty good practical effects, but the digital gore effects look mediocre.

The Graves have potential with its concept, but the execution is badly done on the direction they go with this movie. The movie does have recognizable actors in it, but they barely appear that much in the movie.

This actually appeared on SyFy Channel. I am going to assume they only muted out the few words that I didn't hear and that was pretty much it. So I won't blame the channel for a poor edit. Pretty lame movie at the start quickly introducing us to two hot sisters who are supposed to be into comic books. Then we see them in the punk goth club for one last night out before they take a road trip heading towards more boredom than anything else.

The plot "borrows" from many older movies where young adults breakdown, visit, and otherwise go where angels fear to tread. This is as old as the traveling salesman jokes. Tony Todd makes a few appearances in this movie, but he is not portraying anything scary as he has in his other movies. His character is more like a clown than a monster. I can only imagine his need for money and hope that no one actually watched this movie was his reason for taking the role.

You can't feel anything for the characters since they never really develop during the movie. There is no sense of suspense, no horror, no chills, or thrills. In fact, one scene between actress Clare Grant and Bill Moseley in a school house has no impact on the movie as it really should. I wasn't quaking in fear that anyone was in danger. It felt more like a practical joke, as if Jillian Murray should have walked in and said, "Are you scared? Well you shouldn't be, because you're on Scare Tactics!".

To put my comment in context, I love a good B movie, such as the Tarrantino's "Deathproof", or Peter Jackson's "Braindead", so I approached the film expecting to enjoy it.

I watched this during the "Grimm Up North" horror film festival in the Printworks in Manchester, UK. I could find nothing about it to recommend it. The acting was poor and the plot obvious, lacking any twists. The film completely failed to generate any sort of suspense, shock, or in fact, horror! All in all, extremely disappointing.

I actually enjoyed the short, shown prior to the film, much more than the feature!

The two main actresses look really good in this. And one of them reminded me of Olivia Wilde somehow (although I can't say why). Other than that, you also have two "horror" heavyweights in the cast. But it also feels like quite a few characters got crammed into this. Technically done very solid, but the story might have needed a few tweaks here and there to work out better.

The usual "Duh" moments are not absent, quite the contrary and of course, although pretty feisty and not always in the "victim" role, our lead women do quite a few "stupid" things. Things that go against common sense that is.

What you should check out though, is the DVD of the movie. I only heard the first couple of minutes, but the commentaries on the Disc seem genuinely entertaining! Rent it and give it a listen (the thing they say about the baby is worth the rent money alone). Not great by long shot, but still far from the worst movies I've seen.

A better name for this awful movie would have to be "Hack." You know how bad acting takes you out of the movie? Well, in the case of "The Graves" EVERYTHING takes you out of the movie. Bad acting, bad writing, bad directing, stupid story, and no reason whatsoever to waste your time with this.

I would say that Brian Pulido should go back to comics but he's not good at that either.

It's a waste when someone is given the talent to be great at something yet no drive to follow through. It's also a waste when someone is given the drive for accomplishment but only floods the market with garbage.