Grave Halloween

The idea was quite good. It's about American college students in Japan traveling to the notorious "suicide forest" to make a documentary for a film class, only to be haunted and stalked the the spirits of the people who died there after a couple of friends desecrate a death site. And the forest chosen as the backdrop is haunting and beautifully photographed. But nothing else is done right. It's followed by a bunch of gory killings which occur with little logic or reason. Many victims are people who have done nothing to wrong the dead. In the end, it's just another excuse to watch young people get slaughtered in gruesome ways. I felt cheated.

Grave Halloween (2013) is a movie I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows an expedition and research project in a forest known for suicides, over 100 suicides per year to be exact. One of the researcher's mothers committed suicide in the forest and while she looks for answers, the answer may put the rest of the research group's lives at risk. This movie is directed by Steven R. Monroe (I Spit on Your Grave 1 & 2) and stars Kaitlyn Leeb (Locked Down), Cassi Thomson (Left Behind), Graham Wardle (In the Land of Women) and Dejan Loyola (iZombie). The storyline for this is a bit unrealistic with the numbers they share and how the issue hasn't become a national/international concern. The acting in this is very mediocre and nothing special. The horror elements are very blah but the kill scenes are actually entertaining and pretty good. I really liked both the makeup and special effects. This is one of those movies if you can ignore the storyline and acting you can enjoy some worthwhile kill scenes. I'd score this movie a 3.5-4/10 and only recommend watching it with the appropriate expectations.

Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb, Isabelle Beech as a child) is an American studying in Japan. She has disturbing dreams about a woman searching for her daughter, calling out for her. This may be because she's beginning a quest to find her birth mother (Maiko Miyauchi).

Joining her in her search is a student video team that will document her journey – producer Amber (Cassie Thomson), cameraman Kyle (Graham Wardle), and sound man Terry (Dejan Loyola).

The group is given a warning about the Yure ("YOU-ray," the restless souls of the suicide victims ) by a wanderer named Jin (Hiro Kanagawa), who knows the forest well and agrees to help them find where Maiko's mother committed suicide.

Takeaway lesson: Do not ... Repeat, DO NOT ... enter the Suicide Forest under any circumstances.

This is a SyFy Channel movie that has all the scary elements of a Japanese "obake" (ghost) story. The acting and story are okay, and actually, compared to other SyFy movies I've seen, Grave Halloween is not bad. But, the problem with SyFy movies is that they are so predictable. That's this one's problem, and this time, there's no familiar veteran actor/actress to "legitimize" the movie.

The movie has only a slight relevance to Halloween, but SyFy Channel exploited that to make the movie part of their "31 Days of Halloween" observance. Pretty tacky, huh?

In Japan, the college student Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb) grieves the loss of her mother, who committed suicide two weeks ago in the notorious "suicide forest". Maiko is seeking out her body and her friends Amber (Cassi Thomson) and Terry (Dejan Loyola) decide to make a documentary about her quest as school project. Terry invites his friend Kyle (Graham Wardle) to shoot their documentary and they head to the forest. On the arrival, they meet the lonely hiker Jin (Hiro Kanagawa), who asks them to leave the dead in peace and go away and stays with them. However they decide to search the spot and soon their college mates Skylar (Tom Stevens), Brody (Jesse Wheeler) and Craig (Jeffrey Ballard) play a prank on them. While returning to their car, the trio finds a dead body and Skyler steals a Rolex from his wrist. When Jin finds what they have done, he advises that they are doomed.

"Grave Halloween" is a horror movie with careful production, gloomy cinematography and good acting. Aokigahara, also known as the Suicide Forest or Sea of Trees does exist in Japan and "lies at the northwest base of Mount Fuji and has a historic association with demons in Japanese mythology and it is a notoriously common suicide site" (see Wikipedia - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aokigahara"). This place might be known by Japanese but is totally unknown for Westerns. Unfortunately the lead story explaining why the Japanese mother of the Western Maiko committed suicide does not work well. The explanation of her suicide is totally unreasonable. Further, if the characters were Japanese, the plot could work better; but the Japanese college shows only American students living a Japanese legend and gives the sensation of a phony plot. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): Not available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

"Grave Halloween" is sort of a very odd mixture between Japanese and Western horror. And the end result is entertaining enough, although not particular scary.

The story is about a group of Americans in Japan, who venture into a forest that is known for the high number of suicides that have been taking place there. Maiko (played by Kaitlyn Leeb) is there to return her dead mother's belongings and to perform a ceremony to grant the spirit of her dead mother final rest. The forest seems to be unending and plays tricks on those who venture inside.

As entertaining as "Grave Halloween" was, then the movie never really got off more than a mediocre launch. The hybrid between traditional Japanese ghost movies and Western horror didn't really pan out as nicely as it could have been. And as much as I enjoy zombie movies, then the spirits haunting the forest should have been ghost entities, but they were more zombie than ghosts. And this ultimately took something away from the story.

The acting in the movie was alright, given the story and the script that the actors and actresses had to work with. Kaitlyn Leeb really carried the movie quite nicely.

"Grave Halloween" is actually one of the more nice SyFy horror movies, but it was just lacking something crucial to make it outstanding.

If you enjoy the SyFy original movie line and are somewhat familiar with the Asian ghost cinema, then "Grave Halloween" could be entertaining for you. It was well worth a single watch, although the movie hardly has enough material to sustain more than a single viewing.

"Grave Halloween" scores a mediocre 5 out of 10 stars.