Macabre...ish Horror Review: Open Grave

 

 

Open Grave, 2014/ 1 hr 42 min

 

A man wakes up with amnesia, on top of a pile of decomposing corpses, inside of what seems to be a mass grave.

A lady helps him out of it and he finds a cabin with people in it nearby but they seem to have the same affliction he does. All have amnesia and with the help of clues they find out their names, they have keys but there are no cars outside and they do not trust each other. One woman (Josie Ho) who seems to know something, speaks not English. She writes the same thing over and over but no one can read it.

The cabin is fully stocked with food, ammo and has utilities and there is a calendar with a date circled on it but only the Asian lady knows what it means.

After some time, the man from the grave, John Doe (Sharlto Copley) starts to get his memory back and it’s not looking good. As they search the area they find more bodies, these, bound to trees. A few of them try reading and one discovers he can read Latin and speak several languages. Others find out what they can do by their muscle memory. And odd familiarity tells some of them they may know each other.

Outside in a shed is a woman on tether, she seems feral and enraged at the man from the grave. They also discover a cctv camera in the shed, it becomes more concerning when they hear more screaming from the forest and go searching for it and discover their vehicles under camouflage.

What’s happening here becomes a more clear when the screaming man is discovered and he is not relieved to see his rescuer. Plus their memories are returning and they are not good memories.

What they were doing out here, is so bad. Or maybe it just looks bad without the full picture?

This thriller was good! I still didn’t have the whole picture until the very end. The concept is good, the cinematography and effects are good too, it felt post apocalyptic. Well done!

P. S. This is completely unrelated to the 2009 Eliza Dushku film, Open Graves.

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