Movies
Open Graves (V)
Open Graves was dead on arrival. It’s a heartless rehash of various other films, but poorly executed. Not even the sight of Eliza Dushku can pull this movie out of the ground. The producers dug their own grave when they gave the green to the project before the screenplay was ready – and for that the movie deserves to be buried alive.
Arriving on DVD February 24th from Lionsgate Home Entertainment is Álvaro de Armiñán’s embarrassing Open Graves, a Jumanji-esque horror film that’s plagued with horrid acting, lame kills and shoddy CGI.
Eliza Dushku (Wrong Turn) and Mike Bogel (Cloverfild) star in the film that follows an international group of young surfers (super lame) that come into possession of an ancient artifact, Mamba, an old board game made from the skin and bones of a witch executed during the Spanish Inquisition (ohhhh creepy). At a drunken party one night, they casually decide to play (why wouldn’t you?). It’s all fun and games until they find out that their fates are sealed when they loses. Only the winner can set things right.
One of the first shocks of the film features a nail being pried off, a shot they show over and over again. When a movie opens with such ludicrousness, it’s impossible that anything worthwhile will follow. The FX are shoddy (the black mamba snack is hilarious) and ill conceived; they’re unoriginal, uninspiring and lackluster.
Conceived by Bruce and Roderick Taylor, the screenplay attempts to bring something new to the table, but ends up falling into cliché patterns (yes, the end is the most obvious conclusion possible). The characters are underdeveloped and the way the story unfolds is idiotic. The entire movie should have taken place over the course of one night, instead of breaking from the game play. It’s as if we watch a bunch of dolts playing a board game, then sit back and wait for them all to die, one by one, in yawn-inducing fashion.
What really kills the movie is the generic editing and crappy cinematography. The film looks cheap and lazy, right down to the camerawork by Álvaro de Armiñán. There’s nothing happening in the story, nor visually to keep the audience engaged.
Open Graves was dead on arrival. It’s a heartless rehash of various other films, but poorly executed. Not even the sight of Eliza Dushku can pull this movie out of the ground. The producers dug their own grave when they gave the green to the project before the screenplay was ready – and for that the movie deserves to be buried alive.
Universal has been having a hell of a time getting their Universal Monsters brand back on a better path in the wake of the Dark Universe collapsing, with four movies thus far released in the years since The Mummy attempted to get that interconnected universe off the ground.
First was Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man, to date the only post-Mummy hit for the Universal Monsters, followed by The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Renfield, and now Abigail. The latter three films have attempted to bring Dracula back to the screen in fresh ways, but both Demeter and Renfield severely underperformed at the box office. And while Abigail is a far better vampire movie than those two, it’s unfortunately also struggling to turn a profit.
Where does the Universal Monsters brand go from here? The good news is that Universal and Blumhouse have once again enlisted the help of Leigh Whannell for their upcoming Wolf Man reboot, which is howling its way into theaters in January 2025. This is good news, of course, because Whannell’s Invisible Man was the best – and certainly most profitable – of the post-Dark Universe movies that Universal has been able to conjure up. The film ended its worldwide run with $144 million back in 2020, a massive win considering the $7 million budget.
Given the film was such a success, you may wondering why The Invisible Man 2 hasn’t come along in these past four years. But the wait for that sequel may be coming to an end.
Speaking with the Happy Sad Confused podcast this week, The Invisible Man star Elisabeth Moss notes that she feels “very good” about the sequel’s development at this point in time.
“Blumhouse and my production company [Love & Squalor Pictures]… we are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” Moss updates this week. “And I feel very good about it.”
She adds, “We are very much intent on continuing that story.”
At the end of the 2020 movie, Elisabeth Moss’s heroine Cecilia Kass uses her stalker’s high-tech invisibility suit to kill him, now in possession of the technology that ruined her life.
Stay tuned for more on The Invisible Man 2 as we learn it.
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