Arguably the best of the 8 Films to Die For from 2006’s After Dark Horrorfest, “The Gravedancers” (Lionsgate) combines supernatural, survival and splatter film styles into a story of blasphemy, revenge and murder.
Following a poltergeist-prompted hanging that’s never explained, the production briefly turns into a buddy flick like “The Big Chill,” with three college friends reuniting at the funeral of an old school chum who died in a car accident. But after the service, it quickly descends into a twisted and imaginative story that’s marred only by a few minutes of baffling CGI effects.
The real action begins when Sid Vance (Marcus Thomas) meets up with his old friends Harris McKay (Dominic Purcell) and Kira Hastings (Josie Maran) at a reception after the funeral, and convinces them to return with him to the cemetery to send off their late pal in a way he would have appreciated.
There, they drink too much wine before finding a greeting card at the grave site with a few verses about celebrating life by dancing on the graves of the dead. Of course, the poem turns out to be a curse that awakens the spirits of the corpses whose burial plots they’ve desecrated, and from that point on, the film turns super-ugly as the three characters are haunted by the evil spirits of three bad eggs — a piano-playing teacher who murdered her husband and his lover with an axe; a pyromaniac kid who torched his family; and a sadistic rapist and serial killer.
With the help of two parapsychologists, the three friends discover they have a month to end the brutal hauntings or die trying. What follows is a thrill ride of ghost attacks reminiscent of “The Entity,” hallucinations that bring to mind “Nightmare on Elm Street” and mean-spirited slice-em-ups straight from the best ’80s slashers.
The acting in “The Gravedancers” is convincing and the camera effects keep the atmosphere chilling. The scare tactics work, and even the story is fairly original as far as these things go. But what really keeps the story compelling is the chemistry between characters, who are far more empathetic and believable than the disposable and interchangeable victims that usually frequent these kinds of movies.
The DVD for “The Gravedancers” includes commentary with director Mike Mendez and composer Joseph Bishara, the making-of featurettes “A Grave Undertaking” and “Making the Ghosts” and deleted scenes. The disc also features trailers for the other seven films in the After Dark Horrorfest series.
