Open Grave Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.0

Open Grave Blu-ray Movie Review

Forget about it.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 15, 2014

There have been a surprisingly large number of films about amnesia victims or at least those with memory problems, films as tonally and materially different as Mirage, Dark City, Spellbound, The Number 23, and what is arguably the most complex film made thus far about the condition, Christopher Nolan’s disturbing Memento. In virtually all of these films (and many others with similar amnesiac characters), the audience is typically forced to figure out what’s actually going on along with the character with memory issues, offering a kind of visceral “first person” experience that plops the viewer right down into the story, albeit initially in as confused a state as the forgetful character. However, in many of these films, there is at least one person who does know what’s going on, and either through subterfuge or even unwittingly continues some kind of charade surrounding the amnesia victim. Open Grave seeks to up the ante by delivering not one but six (or at least five—more about that in a moment) characters who have no idea who they are or how they ended up where they are. On top of that surplus of consternation, the film also wants to traffic in more standard horror tropes, including a kind of post-Apocalyptic ambience that includes masses of marauding folks who, if not exactly zombies, are (as the old saying goes) close enough for jazz. Weighed down by a cumbersome storytelling style that is both maddeningly baroque and simultaneously puerile, Open Grave might best be described as (to riff on the famous Pirandello play) Six Characters in Search of a Film.

In what initially seems rather like the opening of Buried, a man awakes and has no idea where he is. For a moment it seems that, like in the earlier film, he’s in a small enclosed space, though in this case he seems to be sharing it with at least one other person—a corpse. Within a moment, though, it becomes obvious he’s actually in a pit, one that is in fact full of corpses. Suddenly a mysterious shadowy figure looms above him and dangles a rope down to him so that he can escape. What’s going on?

The confusion only compounds when the man, replete with a pistol he found in the pit, stumbles through some woods to a house that’s completely illuminated. He walks into the abode to hear people arguing about—him? Someone is obviously upset about some man, and it seems likely that it is in fact the individual we’ve already met. In what turns out to be an increasingly hilarious trope this film exploits, two characters end up aiming deadly guns of some sort at each other, shouting at the other one to put that gun down. (Seriously, if you watch Open Grave and are not afraid of alcohol poisoning, you can make a drinking game out of how many times various characters—and the cast in the this film is not that large—walk into the frame aiming a gun at another character.)

At this point, it turns out that none of the characters has an idea of who they are or why they’re there. In just the first of a number of rather convenient plot points, they at least manage to find a pile of their drivers’ licenses, and so five of the six at least know their names. The man who was in the pit is John (Sharlto Copley). A woman named Sharon (Erin Richards) attempts to calm things between John and Lukas (Thomas Kretschmann), Nathan (Joseph Morgan) and Michael (Max Wrottesley). Meanwhile, the shadowy figure who helped John escape from the pit turns out to be a mute woman whose ID is not just lying around the house and who is nicknamed Brown Eyes (Josie Ho). Brown Eyes seems to be the only one with some inkling of what’s going on, but she can only write in ideographs that may be Japanese or Chinese and seems unable to verbally communicate with anyone.

Up to this point, Open Grave actually posits a tantalizing mystery, one that has any number of potential solutions. Unfortunately, from here forward the film alternates between maddening obscurity and equally annoying over explication, as various characters start to have little flashes of memory and the story slowly begins to fill itself in. The supposed biggest tension has to do with John (whose real name may not even be John), who is haunted by little snippets of recall which seem to suggest he’s some sort of evil monster who’s been experimenting on people, but to what purpose? But a number of increasingly contentious relationships begin to unfold between the various characters, seeming to suggest they have some sort of acrimonious history with each other.

Open Grave stumbles through its second and third acts with a couple of admitted scares (one especially horrifying sequence involves an outsider who seems to be crucified on a barbed wire fence), but without any real sustained suspense. By the time the memories come rushing back (only to be lost again, at least temporarily), things turn out to have a remarkably clichéd post-Apocalyptic meaning. Maybe the filmmakers could have offered the audience the same amnesia producing “McGuffin” that the film itself utilizes. Scratch that—Open Grave isn’t memorable enough to warrant anything as drastic as self-medication.

Open Grave Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Open Grave is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.42:1. Defying the norm for independent film these days, Open Grave was shot on actual celluloid and has a nice, if occasionally pushed, look which offers a noticeable grain field and properly filmic texture. The film alternates between very dark and more sun drenched moments, and contrast is generally consistent, allowing for easy segues between sequences. That said, there are still several moments of crush and lackluster shadow detail. Rather surprisingly, the film hasn't been aggressively color graded, other than the opening, blue drenched, sequence in the pit, and so colors, while not incredibly vivid, look accurate and are decently saturated. The transfer suffers from no overt compression artifacts.

Open Grave Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Open Grave's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is suitably involving, including time honored techniques of low frequency effects to add to the audience's unease. A lot of the film takes place out doors, and there's nice attention paid to ambient environmental effects. When two characters manage to get a car running, there is some decent if traditional panning as the car traverses the frame. Dialogue is very cleanly presented but tends to be anchored firmly in the front channels.

Open Grave Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes Featurette (1080i; 3:41) is a standard EPK with interviews and scenes from the film.

Open Grave Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Open Grave begins tantalizingly enough, with several characters suffering from amnesia and a huge pit full of dead people. What could possibly be going on? Unfortunately, the answers never live up to the questions in this increasingly annoying film. The screenwriters alternate between hiding the truth behind misleading red herrings, and then just spilling it all out in gambits like revelatory voiceovers. What's left is a lackluster mystery that never achieves any cathartic resolution. Performances are generally quite good, and director Gonzalo López-Gallego stages things well, with a couple of decent scares along the way. Genre enthusiasts may find enough here to warrant a purchase (if only barely), and those folks should rest assured that the technical merits of the Blu-ray are generally quite strong.