Rent Open Grave (2013)
3.0 of 5 from 77 ratings
1h 37min
- General info
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- Synopsis:
- Jonah (Sharlto Copley) wakes up in a pit of dead bodies with no memory of who he is or how he got there. Fleeing the scene, he breaks into a nearby house and is met at gunpoint by a group of terrified strangers, all suffering from memory loss. Suspicion gives way to violence as the group starts to piece together clues about their identities, but when they uncover a threat that's more vicious - and hungry - than each other, they are forced to figure out what brought them all together before it's too late.
- Actors:
- Sharlto Copley, Thomas Kretschmann, Josie Ho, Joseph Morgan, Erin Richards, Max Wrottesley, Márta Szabó, Balázs Szitás, Zsuzsanna Szabados, Tofi Seffer, Éva Botos, Kati Dombi, M. Frakes
- Directors:
- Gonzalo López-Gallego
- Producers:
- Aaron L. Ginsburg, William Green, Michael B. Wunderman
- Voiced By:
- Araceli Sanz, Pedro De Santiago
- Writers:
- Eddie Borey, Chris Borey
- Studio:
- Signature Entertainment
- Genres:
- Horror, Thrillers
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Reviews (1) of Open Grave
Rewarding viewing, if you stick with it. Mild spoilers ... - Open Grave review by NP
Jonah (Sharlto Copley) wakes up in a pit full of corpses. Stumbling into a nearby isolated house, he finds three testosterone-filled men and two women. There’s clearly some shared confusion here – the men determined to outstare each other, the women tense. And they all have piercing blue eyes – all except the oriental woman (played by Josie Ho), who is also mute.
The film seems to be attempting to be a mood-piece and succeeds to an extent. The cinematography, moments of gore and subtle use of incidental music do everything they can to convince us that something is very wrong. I think my initial problem with this is that the characters are all carved from the same wood – all intense, at the end of their tether. No-one is sure who they are or how they got here, and so form an uneasy alliance.
And yet I warmed to them due to the fact that events seem to be spiralling out of their control. Rather than clearing up the mystery of how they came to be here, and the reason for the scattering of stringed up corpses in the woodland around, things seem to be deteriorating, and the pressure seems to be having a psychological effect on them. Or is it something else …?
This begins with an intriguing premise and slowly builds upon it. The cast, especially Erin Richards as Sharon and Thomas Kretschmann as Lucas, are very good and convey the nerve-shredding frustration they share – as Jonah, Copley is excellent as (what could possibly be) the truth begins to dawn on him. And yet there is more than one truth they have to cope with. Filmed in Hungary and directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego, ‘Open Grave’ is rewarding viewing, if you are prepared to stick with it.
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Critic review
Open Grave review by George Hooper - Cinema Paradiso
Part of the charm of a film like Open Grave is its sense of mystery and the film fosters that sense of the mysterious right up to the very end as it builds towards a climax you would never see coming. The downside? The reason you don’t see it coming is because what you are left with is so convoluted, bizarre and nonsensical that you can’t help but wonder what the point was.
The film follows a group of people who have all awoken with no memory of their past lives and who they are. When one wakes up in a ditch full of bodies he starts to wonder if he has anything to do with what has happened here. While the group search for answers about who they are and why they are alive they come across things that could destroy them long before they recover their memories.
The film has plenty of questions to be solved and thought about while the group searches for answers, the only problem being that all of the questions revolve around one character, around the mysterious man in the pit (Sharlto Copley) and his justifications. While the film fleshes him out and figures out what kind of a man he is, you learn nothing about the others as they prove to be needless meat sacks or eye candy for the viewers.
Copley does a good job in connecting viewers to the story but whenever the film isn’t following him the film stops dead in its tracks as you are stuck with characters you know very little about. Aside from some obvious character traits (one is German, another can’t/won’t talk) you know literally nothing about who they are except for how they may connect with Copley’s character.
The whole film is unique, the ideas on display are impressive but they aren’t thought out. The horror elements of the story are so unclear that there is no sense of danger, the characters feel like cardboard cutouts and the overall conclusion isn’t as smart as people thought it would be making Open Grave another disappointing horror picture that didn’t think before it delivered a half baked idea.