Open Graves is a recipe of films. Ingredient films include: Jumanji, Final Destination, and When Animals Attack. Other ingredients to be added into the mix are the hotness of Eliza Dushku (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Wrong Turn) and some funky Spanish music. I knew this horror film was being created a number of years ago, but nothing concrete ever came about for a long time. The only piece of evidence I could find that let me know that production was actually underway was a behind-the-scenes video on youtube that was spoken in Spanish. It was still a while after that video surfaced when Eliza Dushku spoke on the status of the film saying it is completed, but she didn’t know anything besides that. Ironically, several days later it was announced that Open Graves would premiere on the SyFy channel two weeks later (9/10).
The plot of Open Graves is simple. Jason, played by Mike Vogel (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre Remake, Cloverfield), ends up with a boardgame called Mamba in his possession, and he decides to play it one stormy night with a group of friends. Being a survival boardgame, the existing players who draw the wrong card are kicked out of the game. It isn’t too long after the game is over that one of the friends is killed in an ‘accident’ that resembles the way he was discharged from the game. As the body count grows, it’s left to the survivors to figure out how to stop the game from ending their lives…because it always takes them a while to realize something is wrong.
I was really excited to see Open Graves since I had been waiting for its release for such a long time. Despite all my hoping and expectations – Open Graves was just not good. I’ll start with the bad things first and then end with the positives. There was just a number of aspects in this film that made it…weird. For example: The monk, who has been alive since the Spanish Inquisition, lost his legs for some reason. The script is cheesy at some parts. Whenever a player is knocked out of the game, they each receit a line like, “I didn’t want to play anyway,” or “This was a waste of time.” Either everyone at the table is a soar loser or the script could have been written better. Two other little things that annoyed me are that the tans of characters change throughout the film and that one of the game pieces, a tower, could not have fit in the game package.
By far the most annoying part is the crappy CGI in Open Graves. I read the budget of this film was roughly $6,500,000, so I guess this can be expected. While I could usually excuse bad CGI, the manner in which they are executed is terrible. They literally slow or freeze the film to insert the graphics. This makes the car accident scenes painful to watch. Yeah, there are two because apparently they didn’t learn the first time. Lots of horror films have the stereotype of “the girl running up the steps when she should be running out the front door.” Well, Open Graves takes the cliche a little further and has “the boy climbs up the log wall when he should be running into the field.”
I said there’s good things, right? Well, honestly, there isn’t a lot of nice things to say. Eliza Dusku is amazing, as always. The game board is made out of a witch’s skin, which is gnarly. The scenary, various spots in Spain, are absolutely beautiful. The music fits perfectly and makes you want to dance…or smoke weed. But, that’s about it…
I don’t say this often. Open Graves is not worth a purchase, if it is a new copy. You can find used copies on Amazon.com. It is also available in some Red Boxes for $1.07 a day. I feel those are your best choices based on the quality of the film.
