GRAVE HALLOWEEN

GRAVE HALLOWEEN

Pretty Asian-American student Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb) suffers from a recurring dream where her late mother lures her to the spot of her suicide many years earlier, a spooky forest in her native Japan.

As chance would have it, Maiko is now an exchange student in Japan, along with several other American pals. So, to assist her pal Amber (Cassi Thomson) in making a documentary for her school project, Maiko suggests they venture out to the nearby woodlands - known locally as Suicide Forest because people have gone there to die for decades - where she can deposit a box of her mother's personal belongings and perform a ritual designed to lay her soul to rest. And document the whole journey for posterity, of course.

Did I mention that it happens to be Halloween too?

Amber handles the boom mic. Pal Terry (Dejan Loyola) tags along, in some capacity that I never quite fathomed. His mate Kyle (Graham Wardle) is drafted in at the last-minute as cameraman when someone else backs out. Maiko acts as the documentary's host, standing in front of the camera whenever required.

As the quartet enters the forest, they're oblivious to the strange things beginning to happen around them. When they park their car up at the neck of the woods, for example, condensation on the back window suddenly gathers to form into the face of an apparition...

Venturing deeper into the trees, they begin filming but very quickly come across something extremely unsettling: two Japanese police officers dumping a corpse in the shrubbery. Fleeing before they're spotted, our hapless protagonists then bump into dodgy old fellow Jin (Hiro Kanagawa). He's a local who purports to have frequented the forest for years: he initially warns them to leave. When they politely refuse to do so, he offers to be their guide - adding that the place is "sacred ground" and advising that they must "touch nothing, take nothing".

Their expedition continues, then. Meanwhile, they're greeted by three pranksters from school who thought they'd follow them just to put the shits up them at some point. These idiots, led by obnoxious Craig (Jeffrey Ballard), will shortly demonstrate to the audience just what happens to those who ignore Jin's words of wisdom and attempt to steal the belongings of those who've taken their lives in the forest.

Indeed, their actions unleash a whole shit-storm that, really, Maiko and company should've seen coming - they have, after all, been plagued by hallucinations, sightings of strange white-clad figures in the distance and so on up until this point.

"You are all cursed!" hisses Jin at the remaining group members as he runs away, leaving them completely lost in the heart of the forest. Which would be bad enough, but it's even worse when there are unfriendly coppers, creepy demonic Japanese girls and God-knows-what-else lurking in there...

GRAVE HALLOWEEN is a bizarre film. It's directed by Steven R Monroe - the guy who helmed the I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE remake as well as its sequel, from a screenplay by Ryan W Smith. Between them, they can't seem to decide what type of film they've set out to make.

The tropes of modern Asian horror are here. The nightmares that blur fantasy and reality, the ethereal white-faced ghost girls with greasy black hair covering their faces ... But then, we have a typical Western 'found footage' scenario, complete with finely chiselled young American characters who wonder stupidly into dangerous situations without questions.

Then there's the score which bounces between melodrama and whispering SUSPIRIA-type spookiness. The gore, on the other hand - while taking its sweet time to turn up - is completely at loggerheads with the creepy build-up, offering old-school practical FX work akin to prime 80s slasher fare.

Ghostly goings-on echo the likes of POLTERGEIST in the latter half (herein lies the dodgy CGI). There's even an instance when the soundtrack pays homage very briefly to THE EVIL DEAD, accompanied by the whispered slur of "join us".

Oh, and the fact that the Japanese policemen are seen as such a threat to the youngsters fulfils quite a few genre stereotypes: fear of the older generation, fear of authority, fear of foreigners...

So, yeah, the film's a bit of a conceptual mess - even with Maiko's flashbacks drip-feeding clues as to the true nature of her mother's demise. It's difficult to care, as you're most likely going to be otherwise compelled by the truly strange, off-putting moulding of sub-genres going on.

In fairness, the film is nicely shot and edited, it's never slow, and the cast are all adequate - despite being saddled with awful stock characters to portray. I'll give him his due, too, Wardle carries the film during its final act with some stirring anxiety. Alas, it's all-but-offset by Leeb (who looks more Hispanic than Asian, by the way) gazing lovingly into his eyes despite the terror around her.

It's worth noting that the film was shot for the SyFy Channel and as such boasts the same kind of polished production values that you'd find on, I don't know, "Goosebumps" or something. So although it's slick, it's never scary. Gory, yes, and commendably straight-faced, but far too glossy to elicit any sense of danger.

Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment's UK DVD presents the film uncut and in 16x9 widescreen. For the most part, it looks great. Rich colours, fin detail and bright imagery make for an impressive visual offering, though the intermittent camcorder footage does appear to suffer from edge enhancement.

English audio is presented in both 2.0 and 5.1 options. The latter is actually a pleasingly robust proposition, offering well-balanced separation and canny portrayal of the film's decent sound design which is as clean as it is booming. There is some Japanese dialogue in the film but there are no English subtitles to cater for this. It hardly matters.

The disc opens to an animated main menu page. A static scene selection menu allows access to the film via 12 chapters.

The only bonus content here are trailers for the decidedly generic-looking THE APPEARING and the pretty cool Bigfoot flick WILLOW CREEK (directed by Zed from the POLICE ACADEMY films, no less). These are both defaulted to play as the disc loads up.

I didn't really know what to make of GRAVE HALLOWEEN. It's all over the place, pilfering ideas from various horror sub-genres and attempting to mould them all into one film. It doesn't work, but in its own odd way it's fairly entertaining. I'll probably never watch it again, but it held the attention while it lasted (85 minutes).

Review by Stuart Willis


 
Released by Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment
Region 2
Rated 18
Extras :
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