The Graves

Skull City Mine. This could be a rather fascinating tourist attraction in Nowhere Arizona (well, Unity) if it weren’t for a psychopathic blacksmith not against smashing a mother and her baby (not shown, thank goodness) with a hammer, and finishing off the father (“Nothing personal.”) while lifting up an itty bitty shoe totally devoid of emotion or conscience. The blacksmith isn’t the only menace in the area. There’s a gonzo nutcase (played by Bill Moseley…no shock, right?) and an intimidating preacher (and a township flock obedient to his ministry). The Graves are Phoenix sisters, very close, on a road trip together (looking for the world’s largest thermometer) before big sis heads to New York City for a marketing job. That bond and strength the two hold will be under attack thanks to dangerous forces attempting to encircle them.

 

The film works in chapters. First, the Graves encounter the blacksmith. The blacksmith claims that he answers to a higher power and kills for it. He says he doesn’t take any enjoyment in killing tourists, but when the blacksmith bludgeons folks with his hammer, it sure doesn’t appear to affect him much. While Tony Todd’s preacher is immediately established as a heavy, the blacksmith is the first to really attack, kill, and pursue tourists in a violent fashion. There’s a long chase (Claire Grant, as Megan, and Jillian Murray, as Abby do a lot of running around the desert, junk yards, abandoned buildings, and prairies of the setting), where the Graves stay one step ahead of the blacksmith before ultimately circumventing his efforts to please his higher power. When the blacksmith is defeated, this “line” of (I’m guessing flies, maybe?) spiritual “rapture” takes his soul from his body as the Graves look on in bewilderment (it’s a bad effects scene that proves to be a fatal reminder of the budget failings of this film). Second, Bill Moseley pulls up in a truck as Caleb (or, as his friends call him, Cookie!!!), with a shotgun, and he not long after admits to be Jonah’s (the blacksmith) brother. Caleb doesn’t frown upon hurting, truthfully acknowledging that his brother may not have had the stomach for killing but he does. So the second chapter has the Graves trying to avoid Caleb. It is more of the same, except Moseley has more personality than the blacksmith, with the added bonus of a pig snout novelty toy he wears. Looking normal without much make-up or prosthetics involved, Moseley still can’t resist hamming it up a bit. The film sure could have used the life at that point in the running time. He blows a male victim’s head out with a shotgun then tells the Graves that he would no longer use guns because he “liked to get up, close, and personal with the ladies”. Moseley has too much fun as a sadist. His character likes to hunt humans, hurt them, watch them squirm, hear them beg, and taunt them through his psychopathic behavior. When offered money, Caleb says that the only thing he wants is her suffering. Caleb is Otis Driftwood out of costume. Caleb makes the mistake of toying with Megan too long, with an injured Abby coming to her rescue (but not before Megan bites his nose off!). Then third, the Graves must contend with Todd’s nutty reverend, Unity’s cult, and the demon “savior” they worship (and allowed the murderous Atwoods to kill tourists as “restitution” for the township to remain prosperous and under the demon’s protection).

 

 

This film has plenty of CGI blood and almost no gory effects to speak of. The killings happen mostly off-screen, and when there is violence (the nose bitten off, head destroyed by shotgun blast…), it isn’t particularly impressive (like the blood, the effects are cheap CGI). Clare Grant and Jillian Murray are easy on the eyes, in their muscle shirts, and the film goes out of its way to tell us that their sisterly bond is always the reason the two remain survivors. Horror vets Todd and Moseley are allowed to do what they do, with little restriction. Todd sends up spirit-filled preachers, while Moseley stays true to the form of hick, cold-blooded, gleeful predatory psychos he relished playing throughout his career. Amanda Wyss of A Nightmare on Elm Street doesn’t have a very glamorous part, portraying a waitress and follower of the Unity guardian demon. While we see the demon take the spirit of the blacksmith, thankfully we don’t have to endure further bad special effects of others suffering the same fate; instead we hear victims tormented while their souls are taken. The flies noticeably mentioned probably related to Beelzebub’s “Lord of the Flies.”

 

The desert spot the film places emphasis on and the town of Unity near it are built as outskirts-of-nowhere, end-of-the-road, hellish desolation. You end up here, and if you are killed, the idea of ever being found is remote (remote as the location itself). This is what makes the desert setting so ideal for the horror genre. The 70s did this well. The “highway to hell” path often inadvertently taken by potential victims of peril will always have its place in horror. The Graves follows this route, but unfortunately the film doesn’t quite have the exploitative chops to truly disturb or unsettle. What made Otis Driftwood so chilling in The Devil’s Rejects isn’t here in Caleb Atwood…it is like a tamer version without the added 70s disguise. Todd looks silly “getting filled with the spirit”, hopping up and down. It is mocking Pentecostal, Holiest worship, but he’s not the least bit scary or frightening. The blacksmith hammers victims out of the vantage point of a camera, and most of his time is stalking in broad daylight without much success we can visually see. This film has interest in those, wanting to follow in their footsteps, but doesn’t quite have the stones to go all the way. That doesn’t necessarily bother me all that much since I don’t prefer seeing long-term torture or abuse against victims, but that seems to be the audience meant for The Graves. I don’t see them jonesing to The Graves…it just doesn’t go all the way, or at least far enough.