Children of the Grave

I have to agree that the credibility of the investigations is sketchy based on how the information was presented. There's just way too much additional "drama" involved. If there was compelling evidence, the added recreations and images of dead people weren't needed. Perhaps they wanted the film to be two hours and needed to add in some time. The fact that John Zaffas was involved, as a credible and experienced demonologist, helps their credibility but I'm not so sure he was any more impressed with the final product than we are. Who knows. I still found many things included to be interesting and some of the evidence impressive so I'd say anyone interested in the subject of the paranormal should still give it a look-see.

Anyone watching this movie in the hope of some fascinating insights into the world of the paranormal investigator or perhaps just for a few scares is going to be sorely disappointed.

If the intent of the filmmakers was to convince us that the EVP recordings, photographs and video footage were real they did a very poor job. The editing jumped all over the place, at first I thought it was just going to be like that at the start of the film and then it would get down to the proper investigations, but sadly it continued right up to the last minute.

There was not one moment when I was even vaguely convinced any of the footage was of a real supernatural event, they jump cut so quick you were left feeling like they were trying to hide something, interspersing it with staged footage of little children and dramatic or heavy metal music took you further away from feeling like this was a serious documentary.

If they wanted to make a point they needed to slow down, focus on one happening at a time, show us the footage of things actually happening - not just say something happened.

Overall the whole thing pretty much bored me, there wasn't even a hint that this could actually be a real investigation and at no point did it stay still long enough for you to actually get creeped out.

Riiight, at one point, they read an "actual letter" supposedly written by a child orphan.

In that you have sentences like "Little did I know"... something along the lines of "I didn't know this great country had its own concentration camps".

Quite elaborate and cultivated for an orphan... child... many many years ago. They had good history and English language lessons in those orphanages!

That was around the middle of the movie. I would have quit watching it earlier if I had something better to do, but had done my share of Youtube that day already, and needed to watch something longer than 45 seconds. But after this very bad mistake of the "actual letter" I completely disconnected.

These directors know nothing about movies or even about how to make a constructive, credible narrative. Also, they are not objective.

I think this would be better classified as a MOCKUMENTARY, if it was this bad on purpose.

Children of the Grave (2007)

*** (out of 4)

Extremely creepy documentary that takes a look at various places said to be haunted by children. Using re-enactments, experts as well as on the location shooting, this documentary takes us to various locations said to be haunted and this includes a creepy orphanage in Indianapolis where 699 children were buried together. Another location is an orphanage that was used to interrogate Nazis during WW2. Finally, one of the last stops is in St. Louis on a place called "Zombie Road" where there have been multiple murders, drownings, deaths and perhaps Satanic sacrifices. Once again a film like this should have one goal and that's to make the viewer feel creeped out. This film pretty much had my blood turning cold from start to finish because there's some pretty creepy stuff here that's also mixed in with a lot of sadness because so many of these children were either physically or sexually abused. Hearing thoughts on why children might not "pass on" was rather interesting and I found the entire documentary handled the subject matter with care. We have "modern technology" that's suppose to bring us closer to hearing voices of the dead and I personally don't buy into this equipment too much. I've seen it in various shows and personally, I don't but it but this didn't take away from the film. The stuff on Zombie Road was extremely creepy especially some of the photographs captured. There are several photos of actual ghosts that were taken including one of JonBenet Ramsey that I had never seen.

The Booth brothers have had a long career in soft-core porn, but in this stinker, they've branched out into "documentaries" about the paranormal. I put "documentaries" in quotes because usually documentarians at least make some effort to depict real events. I guess stars Keith Age, John Zaffis and Steven LaChance (billed as an "extreme haunting specialist" whatever that is) did actually visit the locations depicted in the film, but that seems to be where the connection to reality ends.

There is so much wrong with this film, I'm tempted just to put it in a list. I did, in fact, make a list as I was watching it, and Googled some of the claims made, just to see if it added up. Some of what they said actually was factual, but a large portion of the information presented was simply fabricated. It doesn't start well when the star, paranormal grandstander Keith Age, interviews a woman in a cemetery who seems to be some sort of expert. You'd think she'd dress a little nicer, but hey. Age asks her leading questions about the local orphanage, rather than getting actual information from her. Later, footage from old silent films is shown in such a way that the viewer is led to believe that this is actual footage from these old orphanage. The filmmakers also present the fact that many children died in this orphanage as evidence of some sort of wrongdoing, ignoring the fact that many children died even in loving homes before antibiotics were available. Also, the "unmarked mass graves" Age talks about date to 1918, a year the filmmakers and Age didn't bother to research. It was the year of the flu epidemic that killed millions.

Then there's all the footage of various video and audio tricks and effects, done like a goth-metal music video. My particular favorite is that of a Yamaha audio mixer with all the sliders mysteriously zipping down to zero. (the sliders on Yamaha digital mixers do that when you reset them). The bros Booth also need to hire a better script supervisor, because their titles and other text are rife with misspellings ("he 'through' her doll into the fireplace"), odd capitalization and misuse of its/it's ("The US Military occupied the building, where it interrogated 'it's' Nazi POWs."). Which brings me to another point. The Booths play fast and loose with the facts. At the Pythian Castle in St. Louis, a title says POWs were kept there, but Wikipedia and the castle's own web site tell a different story. The army used the castle as an officers' club, and prisoners were kept at a hospital behind the building.

Speaking playing fast and loose with facts, one Rosemary Ellen Guiley is interviewed in the film, and introduced as a Ph.D. That's a pretty straightforward piece of information, so I went to her web site. There is no mention of her earning a Ph.D. Seems like a pretty good credential to leave off your bio. To confirm, I went to Dissertation Abstracts, a database that lists pretty much every Ph.D dissertation published in US. No Rosemary Guiley. I found Carl Sagan and Newt Gingrich's dissertations, though! I could go on, but it's really tiring going over all the "evidence" they fabricated. I realize that they may have dramatized some of it for effect, but there really is a lot that's faked, and to me that's fraud. If you don't have adequate evidence, don't make a documentary. Reality is interesting enough without fakery. So, unless you like cheese ball effects, portly paranormal investigators dressed in paramilitary fashion and a lot of misinterpreted BS masquerading as "evidence" steer clear of this turd. It might be worth watching for sheer ridiculous entertainment, though; a "Plan 9 From Outer Space" of paranormal documentaries.