May I Have This (Grave)Dance?

Ever watch a film that was made when you were an adult--legal to vote, legal to drink, college degree long in hand--and realize that was almost 20 years ago? That 2006, which I swear was just last week, was actually not one, but nearly TWO decades in the past? 

Children have since been born, gone through puberty, released pop albums, learned technology far better than us elderly ever will. You can watch The Gravedancers and flinch at the weird blue gray pallor that coats your frames and cackle at the CGI not because it's a fairly low budget horror movie, but because it's actually from a DIFFERENT AGE.

This is important. Maybe it's my way of not making this all about how old I feel, but remembering that this was a completely ancient ERA of genre film really helps frame your watch. 

Quick Plot: Harris is a successful lawyer trying to start a family with loving wife Allison. Life is interrupted by the death of a college pal, which reunites Harris with his two best pals from back in the day: Sid, whose primary post-university high point seems to be maintaining status as a functioning alcoholic, and Kira, who has clearly never stopped loving the very moved-on Harris. 

The trio go out for drinks and decide to continue their mourning at the gravesite of the deceased. Any worries that this is in bad taste are quickly pushed away when Sid finds a black envelope conveniently resting on a nearby stone. In it contains a poem all about living in the moment and what a joy it is to dance upon graves. Surely it's a sign that they should, you know, gravedance!

Harris returns to a rightfully displeased Allison and understandably does NOT tell her about his evening festivities (especially since they enjoyed a kiss or two with Kira). Very soon, that becomes the least of their problems as the couple begins to experience ghostly activity. Kira and Sid have similar experiences, leading them to a pair of pre-Ghosthunters being a thing ghosthunters Vincent and Frances to help stop the haunting before it becomes deadly. 

Frances is thrilled with the chance to gather real evidence of paranormal activity (note: we're still several years away from Paranormal Activity). A little digging turns up the obvious: dancing on graves will unleash the ghosts of those inhibiting said dance floor. Naturally, these particular ghosts were homicidal maniacs: pyromaniac child, rapist judge, and axe-wielding piano teacher. 

Directed by Mike Mendez, The Gravedancers is a film that ages oddly...even as you watch it. For the first act, I found myself cackling at the typical aughtsness of fairly awful, very dumb young(ish) people making terrible choices with every breath. The ghosts seemed silly, the dialogue even siller. But at some point, something started clicking into place. Mendez has since gone on to make some successful outright horror comedies, and while The Gravedancers isn't a laughfest, the film has a sly sense of humor. The cast is far sharper than they initially seem, and even the Beetlejuice by way of Bava-y monster makeup becomes, at times, kind of creepy. 

The Gravedancers grew on me. It's a standard ghost story with some specific twists, executed with deceptive intelligence by Mendez and his screenwriters Brad Keene and Chris Skinner. I don't know that I'll ever watch it again or work hard to recommend it, but I ultimately enjoyed myself. This is VERY far from great, but it's never boring, and more importantly, never takes itself too seriously. 

High Points

Once our cursed dummies gather in one place, The Gravedancers really hits its stride in terms of timing and momentum. The finale is both funny and scary and yes, looks pretty terrible at times, but really helps to up the energy

Low Points

I know, I know: CGI did not look very good on a low budget in 2006. But I'd forgotten just HOW not good it was. Pair that with the weird gray-blue tint this streaming version has and it makes for a fairly ugly watch

Lessons Learned

I have yet to heed this, but The Gravedancers is just one more reminder that in any supernatural disaster, the ability to drive stick may save your life

Yes, it's irresponsible to be in your 30s and drunkenly party in a graveyard, thus inviting murderous spirits onto your trail, but the REAL culprit in this haunting is the wife who decided to not spend time with your awkward college love triangle and went home, thus opening the door for you to drunkenly party in a graveyard in the first place

Setting your film in a graveyard is a great trick for directors looking to take home a prop that includes their name

Does the Cat Die?

No! because apparently, the feline actor was a jerk who scratched Clare Kramer (AN ACTUAL [BUFFYVERSE] GOD) and was fired from production. So don't worry!

Rent/Bury/Buy

If you can forgive the fact that this movie looks like it was dropped in a puddle and brushed off, there's a fair amount of fun to be had with The Gravedancers. It's dumb, but in a smart way. It's currently streaming on Amazon Prime in its muddy glory. 

A Perkins' Dozen

Quick Plot: In 1999, fourteen children were abducted in the town of Stone Cove (and yes, you will constantly hear "Stone Cold" in your head and everything is better that way).

Ten years later, the town has mostly moved on from the tragedy, with only policeman/grieving father Dwayne Hopper still trying to solve the case. While this has done little help his marriage to the unhappy Janine or parenting of the teen rebel Daisy, it looks like on a fateful night exactly a decade after the disappearance of his son, Dwayne may have met the man responsible for his pain.

While covering the overnight shift at the local holding cell, Dwayne catches the eye of a mysterious prisoner named Ronald Perkins. Something is off about the self-identified pharmacist. Is it that Dwayne has never met him, despite them both being lifers in such a small town? That much like the man who took his son, Perkins seems to be missing a finger right where young Kyle once took a bite? Or that he's just an incredibly creepy dude who is obviously, without a doubt, the man responsible for Stone Cold--er, Cove's pain.

Hopper asks one of his off-duty pals to investigate Perkins' home, a secluded ranch with a very mysterious basement. As you might guess, those fourteen children reemerge, having been caged, abused, and injected with a steady supply of PCP and other drugs.

What follows is an interesting take on ye olde zombie trope, as Perkins' victims raid Stone Cove, tearing its citizens apart with their own bloody hands. As he tries to take charge, Hopper finds himself torn between protecting his town and not further punishing fourteen insane teenagers (one of whom is his own son) who can't really be blamed for their own actions.

Perkins' 14 is director Craig Singer's followup to Dark Ride, and it's a full traveling carnival better (I think that's how math works, right?). The story itself comes loaded with a nice balance of conflict, as our monsters easily have our sympathy for the abuse they've suffered. While none of the characters make ANY smart decisions when it comes to surviving the night, it's easy to consider the fact that if you were being chased by 28 Days Later-ish creatures, you might not be thinking too straight either. 

It's probably for the best that our characters lack fundamental survival instincts, since the gore on display is one of Perkins' 14 strong points. We get our fair share of disembowelments, all done with gloriously juicy practical effects. I would have preferred to actually see most of the action, but bad lighting seems as common as poor cell phone service in the realm of 21st century horror. 

High Points

From a storytelling point of view, the whole setup (which was apparently submitted via a web contest by Jeremy Donaldson) is strong, and Richard Brake's Ronald Perkins is chillingly villainous in his clean-cut evil

Low Points

I can forgive the film's low budget for some of the rough lighting choices, but the actual geography of some of the more intense sequences is muddled and poorly defined, thereby muting the tension

Lessons Learned

When it comes to not-quite-zombie zombie movies, animal activists are always the worst

Affairs are always improved with warm champagne

Best thing about filming in Romania? The creepy eastern European children's parks, of course

Rent/Bury/Buy

I watched Perkins' 14 via HBO Go, so if you have access to that, it's certainly a decent way to spend 90 minutes of your time. After Dark's 8 Films to Die For typically have mixed results (the same series that gave us Lake Mungo and Mulberry Street is also responsible for Tooth & Nail and, you know, Dark Ride) and this one falls fairly squarely in the middle. The fresh premise probably deserves better treatment, but for a straight-to-DVD (remember those?) zombie-ish movie, it ain't bad. 

The Carnival Is In Town

Because of its doll head poster and carnival setting, I’d always meant to watch Dark Ride.

And now I have. So now life is fully open to so many more possibilities...

Quick Plot: Five awful college students decide to drive to New Orleans for spring break, taking a detour to New Jersey (because GPS wasn’t quite all there in 2006) and spending the night in a carnival dark ride that once hosted a sadistic serial killer. Naturally, said sadistic serial killer is residing in a mental asylum run by equally sadistic and far stupider orderlies whose abuse offers him an easy exit back to his killing grounds. 

No, you haven’t seen this movie before.

Well, I mean, of course you sorta have.

Directed by Craig Singer, Dark Ride is, well, it’s a slasher set in a funhouse and not unlike The Funhouse or many another horror flick set in a funhouse. Our cast is led by Meadow Soprano as a rather unremarkable final girl trying to figure out her relationship with an on again/off again boyfriend. Ashley Tisdale’s sister is her blond friend/early death fodder/partner in slut-shaming the friendly blonder hitchhiker they pick up. Also on board is Patrick “The Sandlot” Renna as Bill, the token fifth wheel/film geek with some confusingly ridiculous secrets of his own.

It’s hard to muster much enthusiasm when discussing a movie like Dark Ride because the movie barely has enthusiasm about itself. As the token frat jerk, Alex Solowitz is the only cast member to offer anything interesting onscreen, so that’s a minor problem. The overall tone can’t seem decide if it should be serious or silly, and the story seems to not even want to tell itself. The logistics of our killer conveniently escaping from a mental institution the same time that--

Wait:

The only reason I go this deep into the plot is that Dark Ride just doesn’t have much else to talk about. Since I’d rather write about messy storytelling than a woman being slaughtered while giving a dude oral sex, allow me to spoil away.

Bill, the geeky friend who wouldn’t really be the rest of our cast’s friend in real life but is required on the trip since movies have a nerd quota, is revealed to be none other than the little brother of Dark Ride’s raging maniac. Which would make sense if said raging maniac brother’s escape was planned for the same night when Bill’s caravan ended up in the out-of-the-way dark ride. But so far as we see, both were done by chance. Considering the wrap-up isn’t even wrapped up with any kind of satisfying resolution, it’s hard not to think Dark Ride was written as it moved on the tracks. 

Which, actually, don’t really exist inside the dark ride of the title. Customers visiting this attraction are apparently supposed to walk through miles of unclear path with no discernible way out. I don’t know about you, but from 1985 on, I don’t know that I’ve ever gone through a haunted house without having the illusion killed by a glowing “emergency exit” sign. But again, maybe things were just, well, DIFFERENT...in 2006 New Jersey.

High Points

While the geography of the actual dark ride doesn’t quite add up, there’s certainly some interesting imagery and effective production design going on

Low Points

Aside from the rather ridiculous machinations of the plotting, Dark Ride suffers from serious tonal confusion in just how seriously it wants to take the death of its characters. Some of the gore is over the top and silly, while other deaths seem as if they’re meant to be taken with great gravitas

Lessons Learned

In the early 2000s, going to New Orleans was considered retro

Unless you're Danny Trejo, no orderly in a mental asylum is ever not a sadistic bully

Shit old towns are the best

Feeding raw steak to an insane and weirdly muscled vegetarian is like giving spinach laced with crystal meth to Popeye if Popeye were, well, you get it.

Rent/Bury/Buy

Eh. One could do worse with a breezy 21st century slasher than Dark Ride, but that’s about the highest compliment I can give. So, you know, that. 

Sometimes these reviews just THAT themselves. 

Just Another Teen Movie

When the second spoken line of a film is “There’s no service!” you as an audience member has to know what you’re getting into. Otherwise, why don’t you just go investigate a strange noise or take a sexy bubblebath or assume that guy who’s been chasing you all night is actually dead after you put a puny bullet in his chest.

Pff. Amateurs.

Quick Plot: Credits roll over a photo montage of pretty young people partying it up at a Mardi Gras, because that’s where pretty young people party and get outstanding tax breaks on filming locations. We see the gang hop in a car—presumably intoxicated, though if so, these are the fastest recovering-from-drunkness humans in the history of mankind—only to get into a horrific accident on an abandoned road. Wedged behind their tires is an escaped hospital patient, which turns out to be quite convenient when an ambulance immediately hits the scene to recover him and hall in the group to clean up their scratches.

The average IQ for a character in a horror film is never high, but even the dumber ones should notice something amiss when the ambulance attendants roughly drag a critically injured man onto a stretcher then both hop in the driver’s seat to roll along. The kids never seem suspicious by the fact that the accident victim is clearly losing blood by the minute, something that is mildly forgivable if a) they are indeed drunk (though don’t act like it at all) or b) one of them wasn’t a former medical student.

The hospital, of course, turns out to be mostly empty save for a few creepy employees. In addition to the orderlies (Michael Bowen from The Lost and Deadgirl and Poolboy’s  Robert LaSardo) we meet a very southa’hn belle nurse (genre royalty Jenette Goldstein) and a suspiciously old fashioned doctor (her Terminator 2 costar Robert Patrick). The kids remain as such:

-The Main Girl whose name I only remember because it’s my own

-Her Boyfriend

-Their Blond Friend

-A Russian Guy Hitting On Their Blond Friend

-The Guy Who Always Has to Take a Leak

Before long, all are escaping or experiencing extremely graphic stabbings, scalpings, and autopsies, all in the name of saving the good doctor’s cancer stricken wife through, shall we say, alternative treatment. In terms of originality, Autopsy is extremely bare bones. You knew that the second “No signal!” was shouted three words into the film.

But putting things like creativity aside, Autopsy has one vital strength: practical effects, and lots of them. This is a film more excited by visuals than silly things like ‘character’ or ‘story,’ and if you know that going in, it’s a surprisingly good time. Organs are tossed around like pizza dough, heads bashed in Irreversible style with a fire extinguisher, and intestines canopied on a ceiling like a baby mobile by way of Tarsem’s The Cell.

As for the rest of the film, it happens in a competent but never inspired way. The young cast is pretty and unmemorable. Veterans Goldstein and Patrick have mild fun, but it feels more like a paycheck job than any form of vacation. The biggest issue comes from the inconsistent tone, which occasionally finds chuckle-worthy humor in the macabre but more often than not reverts to a serious Dead Teenager heaviness. Had director Adam Gierasch (who also did the not terrible Night of the Demons remake) had a little more confidence in his abilities to get laughs, Autopsy could have been genuinely special.

High Points

The aforementioned gore truly is executed with gusto

Low Points

Who are these kids again?

Lessons Learned

Even the coolest hospital orderly isn’t going to just give you a roomful of free experimental drugs

Family illness can be one of the great life altering experiences

Louisianan hospital walls are extremely soundproof

Rent/Bury/Buy

Autopsy is one of 2009’s AfterDark’s 8 Films to Die For, and while it’s fairly unexceptional, it’s also not a bad way to kill 90 minutes of Netflix streaming time. Ignore the fact that you can predict the big picture five minutes in and sit back for some creative kills, at least if that's the type of movie you're in the mood for. You won't care about anyone or thing onscreen, but as lightweight eye candy, one could do worse.