DVD Review: Grave Halloween

By Brad Henderson

Have you ever watched a film and then the next day you don’t remember a thing about it? Yeah, that happened to me with Grave Halloween.

I was intrigued with Steven Monroe’s new flick because I was a huge fan of his remake of I Spit On Your Grave. I was not a fan of the sequel, but I thought the guy had promise. When I read the plot to Grave Halloween it seemed interesting, like Monroe was stepping into J-Horror with this film. For those who don’t know, J-Horror is comprised of films like Phone, The Ring, Ju-On and many others. Basically any movie where there is a ghost with long black hair. Got it? Yeah, this film goes there.

At first I thought it was going to be a straight Americanized J-Horror film, but Monroe mixes it with your normal kids in the woods mumbo jumbo creating more of a oddly paced film that is confusing rather than scary.

In Grave Halloween some Americans (kids, of course) step over into Japan and go to the suicide forest. One of the girls is there to put her mother to rest, but of course, shit happens and there is a lot of running with freaky images of a Japanese ghost with black hair who moves weird. That pretty much sums up the film, but sadly it isn’t scary at all. The most confusing thing about it is the tone. The opening and the introduction it don’t grab you at all and you are kind of left wondering what the hell is going on.

It does feel there were only two acts in the film and I think that is what hurt it the most. We don’t know the characters all that well so when some other people show up randomly, it is hard to care about anyone. The “scary” flash imagery doesn’t help because once we get a little caught up with what is going on we are sidetracked with nonsense. I think Grave Halloween relies way too much on jump scares to try to make it scary instead of relying on a good story.

Grave Halloween was released on September 30 via Anchor Bay.