Gravedancers
My Blog
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
I have the pleasure of introducing a first on my website films page. A good friend of mine, Wayne Lin, has agreed to give me the benefit of his talent with his review of the movie, Gravedancers. Here it is. I’m sure you will enjoy it…the review, not Gravedancers.
The term “horror” means, in its classical definition, “An overwhelming and painful feeling caused by something frightfully shocking, terrifying, or revolting.” You won’t find that in the 2006 Horrorfest film Gravedancers. To sum it up in one word, it is “terrible”. To sum it up in four words, it’s “Rob Zombie’s Halloween terrible”. The plot outline is this: three friends have a drunken night of fun and dance on the graves of some terrible individuals. The ghosts of these individuals come back to haunt the three and their families. Anchored by Prison Break’s Dominic Purcell, and co-starring acting veteran Tchecky Karyo, you would figure that these actors are saving graces to a movie that doesn’t quite solidify. Throughout the movie the three individuals try to find a way to stop the hauntings, and eventually do with the help of “Ghostbusters” (not the Robert Zemeckis film). The methods of discovering the cure is laughable at best, and doesn’t make sense to the conventional wisdom of horror fans (by digging up the body and reburying it). I feel myself getting dumber trying to remember a dense plot. I have to move on. What’s the subplot you ask? (Typically, there is a subplot in films.) The answer is there wasn’t one…in film, this is a no-no. From the acting, to the characters, to the plot development, this movie ranks in one the lowest tiers of films. I dare say Uwe Boll directed better movies than this.
The characters and several instances in the movie follow every cliché that’s available in the cliché dictionary of “horror” movies: the pausing for a scene to look at a ghost in all its glory, one-liners that serve no purpose to the movie, and best of all, ghosts, or “creatures,” giving the character(s) ample time to get away (i.e. moving slower than they previously moved in the movie). The movie didn’t even build suspense. It is in one word “formulaic”. You’re probably asking, “What happens in the middle of the movie?” Well…nothing. From the minute the gravedancers dance on the grave to the rolling of the credits, it is a movie that is laced with hauntings that only a script rewrite can cure. No surprises, no suspense, and bad acting (but hot girls), along with poor script writing make this film the worst hour and 35 minutes you’ll ever go through. My advice: save yourself the embarrassment and don’t watch it. If you do, make sure you drink a few beers and tequila shots to numb you for the experience. For a good horror movie rent the original Halloween…the first one and only the first one.
Wayne Lin is an editor at Tate Publishing and is currently working on his novel, Paradigm.
Gravedancers
wayne lin
