Director: Gonzalo López-Gallego
Cast: Sharlto Copley, Thomas Kretschmann, Joseph Morgan, Erin Richards
Certificate: 15
DISTRICT 9’s Sharlto Copley awakens in a muddy pit full of corpses. How did he get there? He can’t remember. who is he? He can’t remember that either. After wrenching himself out of the pit he meets a group of people seemingly in the same predicament as him but can he trust them, and should they trust him?
The group are all suffering from memory loss, though pieces start to come back bit by bit. As snapshots of their lives start to flashback they find they all have a hidden skill. The cast are an electric mix of personalities and nationalities. Kretschmann will be familiar to many as the Captain of the ship in KING KONG and plays a distrusting, potentially violent, man. Fans of The Vampire Diaries and The Originals will be pleased to know that everyone’s favourite hybrid, Klaus (Joseph Morgan) also features in the film as Nathan, a man who somehow know several languages.
It turns out that there is far more to worry about than each other however, as after exploring the grounds they stumble across more bodies. The reason for these bodies and what they mean leaves the audience guessing until the very end.
OPEN GRAVE starts with a bone-crunching (literally) opener and ends on an interesting revelation, though the route from start to finish gets a little muddled. There are also several plot points that are never really explained or elaborated on, leaving the viewer a little confused. The premise is solid, as is the acting with Copley once again proving that he can hold an audience’s attention. The story is engaging and sucks you in, the plot throwing twists, turns and red herrings all along the way.
OPEN GRAVE is NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD meets MEMENTO. With Halloween almost here you could do a lot worse than picking OPEN GRAVE as your film. It’s more of a slow burner than some of the classic scary slasher movies, but will give you a more interesting evenings viewing than most others on the market.
[usr=3] OPEN GRAVE is out to buy now.
