Open Grave should have been a closed casket

Imaging waking up and having no idea where you are, or even who you are. Then imagine that the place where you woke up was a pit filled with hundred of dead bodies and no way out. This is the opening scene of the new thriller Open Grave starring Sharlto Copley as the man in the open grave. He does manage to get out with the assistance of an unknown woman (who also happens to be conveniently mute and non-English speaking, so she can’t tell him anything about his situation) and stumbles upon some sort of camp where he finds four other people … who also have no idea who they are or why they are there. They do find their IDs, so they at least learn their names, but they remain clueless to their situation until nearly the end of the movie.

I don’t mind a film that has a lead character who has no clue what’s going on. It’s exciting to be putting together the pieces of a puzzle at the same time and not knowing how things are going to come together (like in the Liam Neeson thriller Unknown). At least you can be with the character as he or she travels to various locations and speaks to people to try to figure out what’s happening. Open Grave does not offer the viewer that luxury as none of the characters know what’s going on, and the location is confined to a forest or the open fields around them. They really can’t go anywhere, and the woods also seem to be swarming with some type of zombified humans. Again, we don’t know why they are like that or why some of them are imprisoned in the camp. We do know they’re angry and murderous (like the 28 Days Later rage-infected “zombies”).

The film does star a few familiar faces in addition to Copley, including Thomas Kretschmann (Van Helsing on NBC’s Dracula, and ironically Dracula in Dario Argento’s Dracula) and Joseph Morgan (The Vampire Diaries, The Originals). Familiar faces, however, don’t help move the plot along … not that there is much of one. The film is basically 100 minutes of these six (well, five after one of them is killed by a zombie-ish thing) characters running around, questioning themselves and each other, and basically never getting any answers. Then everything falls into place in the last two minutes and the movie is over. It’s frustrating and unsatisfying, and perhaps the rage zombies in the film were actually members of a test audience that had to sit through this madness. Oh, and the melancholy piano music score was enough to send me over the edge.

Open Grave was directed by Gonzalo López-Gallego who also did the much-hyped Apollo 18, a film I’ve always been curious to see but I’m now having second thoughts about that. I really can’t think of anything that would make me recommend Open Grave, except perhaps for the Klaus fans who want to see Joseph Morgan in a different role. The film’s “tension” just leads to boredom, and you’ll be just as enraged as those zombies by the 102 minutes of your life you just wasted.

Open Grave is available on iTunes, Amazon Instant Video and Video On Demand, and is playing in select cities across the country.