Directed by: Mike Mendez
Dominic Purcell and Clare Kramer are a young, attractive couple dealing with all the problems of young, attractive couples. They worry about money, his ex-girlfriend stalking him, him cheating on his wife with the ex-girlfriend, losing friends and being haunted by three ticked off ghosts.
What? That never happens to you? Well, here's what you do. Go get drunk, head over to a cemetery and start dancing on graves at night. But don't tell anyone I sent you.
Purcell has gone to the funeral of an old friend when he meets up with two other friends and the three of them decide to have a 'wake' for their deceased friend. This is a nice idea. But when they are pretty well smashed, the other guy in the group finds a card on their friends grave and reads it.
Realizing that the words form a cadence, he finds the other two and then he Reads Aloud the card. Folks, there are a lot of horror movie rules. Don't go in the basement" stuff like that. Here is another one.
"If you find a strange card in a graveyard, don't read the stupid thing out loud." Try to remember that.
So, now we have three vengeful spirits after our daring couple and the other two clowns from the graveyard.
Purcell and Kramer are the modern couple who are now dealing with a jealous woman who murdered her lover with an axe and then died several decades ago. Just what every man needs, a dead woman with an axe who has the hots for him. Yes, now she is fixated on 'our hero' and wants him as her boy-toy. She is joined in her fun time delights by the spirit of a ten year old boy who burned to death in a fire he started and a psychotic rapist who would kidnap and torture women, sometimes letting them starve to death after he used them.
We are not talking about the Three Stooges here folks. Mike Mendez has pulled ideas from films like "13 Ghosts", "Hell House" and "Burnt Offerings" all without copying them. He has taken their influence, the thing that made them such classic films, and put those into "Gravedancers" to give us a classy, old-fashioned ghost story. Yee-Haw.
Unlike so many of the movies in the horror genre today (TCM: The Beginning, U-Turn, Cabin Fever or the soon to be discussed Dark Ride) Mendez lets us get to know the characters, he develops them into people we would either like or dislike in real life.
He builds a plot (huh..get it? Grave? Plot? Never mind) in the first part of the film and in the second starts tossing stuff at us to keep us off our feet. Great work. In fact, he does not take too long to get things going, what with creaking doors, and pianos that literally play by themselves.
We are soon joined by a pair of Paranormal Investigators (Tchéky Karyo who dang near steals the show and Megahn Perry), who try to track and stop the evil spirits who have one lunar cycle (a month) to take their vengeance for being pulled back from death. Good news, 30 Days. Bad news, they get stronger each night.
The make up was quite well done, using mostly older style work and the special effects were really good, and done almost totally without crappy CGI, using make-up, screen mattes and body molds which I think make for a better film.
This is one of the best in what American films should be. It has great pacing, humor in the right places, just enough T&A to keep you motivated without actually watching people hump their way across a screen and more then enough things to make you snuggle up closer to the person you brought. Which could be good or bad, I guess. For me, one of the things I truly loved was the house where the ghost hunters live. Eerie, dark, foreboding, just the sort of place I would like to live. And across from a cemetery to boot. I love old houses like that, and hope to own one someday. Don't worry, I know how to fight Zombies.
All in all, a first class film worthy of being in my Top 25 list of Horror films made since 1970. I could stand to own it.