GORE IN THE STORE
REVIEWS BY FANS FOR FANS
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

Beyond The Rave
Hunter Prey
7th Dimension
Army of the Dead
Splintered
Basement
Meat Grinder
14 Blades
Manson Girl
The Blackout
The Torment
The Torment
(Second Opinion)
Hierro
Psycho - Blu-Ray
Pet Shop of Horrors
Kaiji:
The Ultimate Gambler
Shelter
Fullmetal Alchemist:
Brotherhood Part 1
The Final
Bubba Ho Tep - Blu-Ray
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Vampire
The Dead
Resurrecting
The Street Walker
The Haunting Of
Molly Hartley
Soul Eater: Part One
Rozen Maiden:
Traumend Vol. One
Bikini Girls On Ice
Diary of a Bad Lad
Satan's Baby Doll
Feast 111
Phobia
A Lizzard in a Woman's Skin
Valhalla Rising
City of the Living Dead
Dorothy
Daybreakers
Daybreakers
(Second Opinion)
Harpoon: The Reykjavik Whale
Watching Massacre
Harpoon:The Reykjavik Whale
Watching Massacre
(Second Opinion)
Feast 3:The Happy Finnish
Raging Phoenix
His Name Was Jason
Left Bank
Ju-On: White Ghost/White Ghost
Spiral
Ghost Machine
Stag Night
Bitch Slap
The Descent 2
The Descent 2-Second opinion
Dance of The Dead
Henry Lee Lucas: Serial Killer
House Of The Devil
The Twilight Saga
New Moon
Salvage
Salvage-Second opinion
Dread
The Haunted World of
El Superbeasto
Saw VI
The Horseman
Triangle-Second opinion
Triangle
Cabin Fever 2-Third opinion
Cabin Fever 2-Second opinion
Cabin Fever 2
Stan Helsing
Pandorum
Pandorum-Second opinion
Open Graves
Paranormal Activity
Growth
Growth-Second opinion
Train
Antichrist
Wrong Turn 3
Coffin Rock
Orphan
Sorority Row
Drag Me to Hell
Staunton Hill
Summer Moon
Driftwood
Messengers 2

 

Directed By Alvaro De Arminan. Starring Eliza Dushku, Mike Vogel, Lilliam Kouri, Gary Piquer, Boris Martinez, Jose Casasus. Spain / USA 85 mins.

DVD release date 15th January 2010 - £9.99 from Play.com.

In Brief : Dumb American surfers and anonymous Spaniards take it in turns to die horribly after foolishly dabbling with a centuries-old board game named “Mamba”. This would never happen with “Connect 4” though you could have someone’s eye out with that “Buckaroo”…

This Spanish-American co-production had potential to be more fun than it actually is. The script spins an engaging yarn that riffs heavily off sources as disparate as JUMANJI and FINAL DESTINATION, while continuing the xenophobic genre trend for horror movies in which Stupid Americans Get Mutilated In Scary Foreign Lands (c.f. TURISTAS, THE RUINS, et al). It would be churlish to dismiss a movie that climactically offers the sight of the uber-sexy Eliza Dushku as a CG-enhanced, buxom force of evil, but OPEN GRAVES all too soon descends into perfunctory plotting and hokey visual effects.

After a prologue ripe with Spanish Inquisition-era torture and fingernail extraction, the movie proper opens in the North of Spain in the modern day, where grad student / surfer Mike Vogel (who doesn’t believe in all that “voodoo shit”) befriends fellow American Dushku, an Edgar Allen Poe enthusiast who looks better in a wetsuit than most Poe-followers. Along with some other buddies, they participate in the 15th century wish-granting game of “Mamba” - played on a board made of human skin, no less - and subsequently folks die in the order in which they lucked out of the game.

Imported American stars Dushku and Vogel, both of whom have headlined impressive recent 70’s-derived slasher flicks (WRONG TURN and the TEXAS CHAINSAW remake respectively), serve as above-average eye candy in a slickly produced movie that also benefits from attractive location filming. A shame, then, that so much is achingly over-familiar, from the sub-FINAL DESTINATION by-the-numbers scripting that creaks badly between creative death scenes, to the circular resolution cribbed wholesale from the original A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET.

It might have been an undemanding winner if the splatter card had been played more often, though OPEN GRAVES does achieve one gore-coup designed to provoke a nostalgic tear from “video nasty” fans. The stand-out sequence has a bunch of phoney over-sized crabs poking out a wounded guy’s eyeballs in gruesome homage to the marvellous (phoney) spider scene from Fulci’s THE BEYOND.

No extras on Icon’s region 2 disc, presented in 16:9 widescreen with Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound.

Steven West

© London FrightFest Ltd. 2000-2010
__________________________________________________________