Open Graves

Oh Eliza! Whatever possessed you to be part of this nightmare? The only "horror" about this film is that it was made at all. A group of nice-looking booze and sex fueled 20-something's play an antique game, and then start dying. Luckily for them, even though the box containing the game was passed down from the 15th century Spanish Inquisition, all the cards are in pristine condition AND conveniently printed in English! WOW, what luck! There are absolutely no surprises or suspense whatsoever, as this has been done many times before in many better ways. Sadly, even the gratuitous sex scenes generally associated with this genre are almost non-existent, apparently to devote more screen time to the horrible deaths. Out of deference to Eliza Dushku, I cannot give this the one star rating it truly deserves. The rest of the actors are mediocre at best, God-awful at worst. All are completely forgettable, as is the film itself within fifteen minutes of viewing. Skip it, even from the bargain bin.

Open Graves starts out as something at least different enough from the repetitive ghost stories that became too common in the last few years.

Well technically it shares many similar aspects, but remains reasonably different mainly through methods of offing the victims. Unfortunately not different enough.

As oversaturate formula demands, we quickly learn several characters are going to die because of a certain event, and after the first few deaths we already know how everything's will play out. After which we're subjected to scenes of the remaining characters, or at least the central ones trying to figure out what's causing the deaths before it's their turn.

And of course, Open Graves follows the tradition of similar mystery- related films in the sense that once the cast discover an objective, any characterization disappears, the mystery itself becoming supposedly more important than giving the audience any interest in the people trying to solve it.

OPEN GRAVES has a pretty good plot, its well acted by the cast, Eliza Dushku is delicious as always and the direction is okay but the film is actually not something to write home about, there aren't any real memorable moments that will leave you breathless even though some of the death scenes are rather weird, in fact there's nothing that stands out about this film, the best way to sum it up is that its nothing more than a time passer.

However, where I can give it credit is that it does try to be different but unfortunately like you could've guessed it falls short, I'd say only watch this if you want to kill time and if there's nothing else to watch which is the reason I watched it in the first place.

An obnoxious group of young twerps are partying in Spain, according to the story anyway, when one of the group runs into an oddball at a curio shop. The oddball correctly sizes-up this young jerk and gives him something he really deserves: a game, supposedly from the Spanish Inquisition. The game kills the participants in macabre ways. An added thread to the "plot" is a rouge cop who wants the game for himself, though this adds little to the movie. After 20 minutes, the audience is relieved when the main characters start to get killed one-by-one. The death scenes try to gross-out the viewer, but fail miserably. One scene with killer crabs reminded me of something out of the 3 Stooges. Really unconvincing CGI's; watch only if you want a few, very few, laughs.

Okay, OPEN GRAVES is poor. Surprisingly poor, considering the effort that has gone into this low budget production; although it's a US-financed movie it was shot in Spain with a Spanish director and supporting cast. And yet it turns out to be completely horrible, which is all thanks to a lacklustre storyline.

A group of brain-dead surfers are the unlikeable protagonists in this film, among their number the minor horror star Eliza Dushku (WRONG TURN). They get mixed up in a dark world of voodoo and horror when they start playing a game which sees them dying for real. It's much like the 1990s film JUMANJI, where the board game came to life and took the kids on an adventure, except with a horror slant.

Not that there's much in the way of horror here. This a murkily-shot production where swathes of boredom are interspersed with a few mildly gory supernatural death sequences. For some reason, the filmmakers are reliant on very poor CGI effects to keep the movie going, and it sinks the production further. OPEN GRAVES is a real stinker, that's for sure.