Open Grave

2013

Action / Horror / Mystery / Sci-Fi / Thriller

54
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 24% · 17 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 39% · 5K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.2/10 10 31264 31.3K

Please enable your VPN when downloading torrents

If you torrent without a VPN, your ISP can see that you're torrenting and may throttle your connection and get fined by legal action!

Get Private VPN

Plot summary

A man awakes-- without memory -- in a pit full of bodies and must figure out if the people who rescued him are the killers, or if he is the murderer.


Uploaded by: OTTO
December 06, 2013 at 05:07 PM

Top cast

Sharlto Copley as John / Jonah
Joseph Morgan as Nathan
Erin Richards as Sharon
720p.BLU 1080p.BLU
805.50 MB
1280*720
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 42 min
Seeds 3
1.64 GB
1920*1080
English 2.0
NR
23.976 fps
1 hr 42 min
Seeds 5

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by TheSquiss 6 / 10

Sometimes waking up in a pit of corpses isn't very much fun.

Gonzalo López-Gallego's (Apollo 18) latest offering, Open Grave, is a rare pleasure where the viewer doesn't quite know what's going on until fairly late in proceedings. As with 1997 'cult' classic Cube, we find ourselves in a similar position to the protagonists, who wake from unconsciousness with amnesia and something resembling a warzone outside, with trees and fences littered with fetid corpses and those still slowly expiring.

When a 'John Doe' (Sharlto Copley) regains consciousness to find himself in a large pit in the woods in the company of innumerable cadavers, it doesn't take a genius to work out that something very bad has happened and might just still be happening. When he finds a gun, his panic escalates; is he victim or murderer? A mute figure, Brown Eyes (Josie Ho), throws down a rope to help him escape and leads him to a shack in the woods where several other survivors/victims are discovering the situation for themselves. Suspicion and blame ensues as the group tries to establish their identities and just what the hell is going on...

There's a great deal to like about Open Grave, from the opening sequence in which a pair of unblinking eyes slowly fill with confusion, awareness and panic to give the impression that, like with Cormac McCarthy's The Road, we'll never know exactly what, why or where. There are nods in several directions (World War Z, 28 Days Later, Contagion), all of which keep us guessing as to whether we're in the presence of zombies, the aftermath of a government experiment or some new Captain Trips. López-Gallego doesn't allow us to know how far it stretches or how serious the situation. If the characters in the middle of it don't know what state their lives are in and how many breaths they still have, why should we? Would that more thrillers took this approach!

Like Apollo 18, Open Grave is likely to attract a limited audience of a certain demographic but for those who like their horror a little less obvious and with a hint of mystery, this should fill a Friday evening quite satisfactorily. There is a quantity of violence and gore as one would expect and it is sufficient to make it feel 'real' without pandering to the morons who only find pleasure in gratuitous blood spatter.

A lack of genuine scares steers Open Grave away from being an out and out horror but it does play on the nerves, keeping us on edge until we know what's going on. This feels like a low budget flick but López-Gallego handles it well, eking it out so that rather than allowing his film to feel empty, he emphasizes the isolation of the characters.

Copley recently complained that Hollywood doesn't know which box to place him in because he plays such a varied range of characters. I'm not sure I'd go along with his own assessment yet. Though his eight features to date, including this month's particularly dark Oldboy, have seen him play both solid support and quirky lead, I'm not sure there's sufficient chameleon-like qualities to have Ben Kingsley worried for the time being. Nevertheless, Copley remains a very watchable actor and as the John Doe in one hell of a tight spot, he keeps us both guessing and attentive throughout.

Open Grave isn't going to scare you witless like Insidious or have you avoiding the trees like The Cabin in the Woods, but if you're looking for a mild thriller that doesn't lay everything out before you in the first act, you could do far worse than this.

For more reviews from The Squiss, subscribe to my blog and like the Facebook page.

Reviewed by t-dooley-69-386916 7 / 10

Gripping, Intelligent and Bleak Horror

The synopsis of this film is enough to make you want to watch it. A man wakes up in a pit full of dead bodies. He has no memory of how he got there. After escaping he enters a house full of strangers who are also extremely agitated and just like him they have all lost their memory.

The elephant in the room though is that if they are all alive then who has killed all the people? That is when the fun begins. What I really liked about this film was that it continued to surprise, I got it wrong every time I tried to guess what was coming next and that for me is a real plus.

The cast are a brilliantly disparate group too and they all do an excellent job of keeping you right on the edge of your seat. The pacing is just right; the make up spot on and even the music gets the mood just right. There is not a lot not to like here (sorry about the double negative). It was filmed in Hungary but has a feel of being American despite a cast that is International. If you like your horror's to be a bit on the dystopian side then you should have a look at this.

Reviewed by Reviews_of_the_Dead 7 / 10

Interesting Mystery with a Reveal that Works

This was a movie that I'm not entirely sure when I added it to my Netflix list for DVDs in the mail. This couldn't have been one of my college adds, due to the year. Regardless, I randomly got this movie and decided to blindly give it a watch, having very little idea of what it was about. The synopsis is a man wakes up in the wilderness, in a pit full of dead bodies, with no memory and must determine if the murderer is one of the strangers who rescued him, or if he himself is the killer.

Much like the synopsis states, we have Sharlto Copley wake up in an open grave that is full of bodies. He finds a gun and throws up due to his situation, also having no idea how he got where he did. Someone then throws down a rope so he can escape. She is an Asian woman who is a mute and is credited as Brown Eyes (Josie Ho). This man has an odd cut on his arm and he heads to a nearby house.

Inside he finds a group of people trying to figure out what is going on. They're all having troubles remembering who they are or how they got here. One of the men has a seizure of sorts, but gets through it. IDs are produced where they piece together everyone's names but the man from the grave. Lukas (Thomas Kretschmann) is leery of that man and doesn't think he should have been rescued. There's also Nathan (Joseph Morgan), Sharon (Erin Richards) and Michael (Max Wrottesley). The group goes about trying to figure out who they are and how they got here.

Everyone keeps getting glimpses of who they are from different things. Nathan realizes that he can read Latin and French, which makes Michael think that this is his house or at the least, his books. Michael is really good with firearms and there's a closet full of them. The man from the grave eventually learns that his name is Jonah and that he thinks he was seeing Sharon.

Things take a turn as they find a woman tied up in a shed. There's something not quite right about her and Brown Eyes goes to feed her. She is quite aggressive as well. She's not the only one like this and they find bodies are strategically placed as well. The question is why and why does Jonah keep having flashbacks of him attacking a woman and dragging the body of someone toward the grave? Much like the synopsis asks, how are these people connected and why are there here?

As I was saying in the beginning, I wasn't really sure what I was getting into. I do like some of things that this does though for sure. It gives it a vibe of like an Identity or Memento in the fact that the characters don't know how they're connected or how they got there to start. I think it is an interesting way to fill in the back-story through their memories as well. It is interesting that they'll do something and it will trigger them to remember. This is something that happens to me quite a bit in real life. I have a really good memory, but when asked on the spot, I can't remember. It is when something triggers it that I can recall a good amount. Getting back to the movie, as the characters do, they might only get part of a memory so it doesn't make sense and it makes them question their nature from what they have remembered as well.

So there's a reveal in this movie that I don't really want to spoil for you. I'll have a brief spoiler section at the end, because I would say that just over half way through the movie, it gets revealed what type of movie this is actually. If you know me, I do like movies of this subgenre, but it is one that they really do have to do something new for me to really enjoy it. I thought this did something like that for sure. I was a bit annoyed that they weren't going to flesh out the story more. I think that they did that well enough. There's actually more here that could be expanded as well.

That will take me to the pacing of the movie, which I did have some slight issues with. I was hooked in the beginning of this story with these characters having no idea who or why they're there. The idea of remembering things as we go was good, but I do think that we don't necessarily get enough and there's a massive dump of information near the end. I was glad that at least got that, but there are still some questions that I had. This doesn't make me hate the movie, but also cannot fully love it either. The ending was solid though to be honest.

The acting for the movie I thought was pretty solid. I thought Copley is good as the lead and he plays this role in a way that works. I like that immediately him and Kretschmann's character of Lukas is butting heads. They don't trust each other, but Lukas thinks Jonah is bad where Jonah kind of agrees with him. He wants to get to the truth and I like that the more we learn, how different this goes. I would say that for the most part, these two are the stars and Jonah really discovers most of the story we're piecing together. Ho is solid as a mute. I think that would be a tough role to play and she was fine. Morgan, Richards and Wrottesley are all solid as well. They round it out with the rest of the cast we get here. I should also say that Richards has some beautiful eyes.

I want to take this over to the effects next. They're actually really good. I think that they're done practically and if not, they have some good CGI that is subtle. The look of these people who are infected by something is good. I also think that the wounds on people do as well. The cinematography is also really solid for what they need. They do an interesting effect that we see is fuzzy, signifying that their memories are hazy. I like the set up to indicate that. I did also have a slight issue with how grand what we're dealing with is. It doesn't necessarily need to be explained, but I was curious regardless.

Now with that said, this is an interesting film. I like that we're presented with a blank slate and as these characters are figuring things out about themselves, we're learning it too. It prevents just knowledge being spoken to us and I can appreciate it. It doesn't work well with the pacing. I will admit though, I did lose interest briefly in the middle and thought they could have done a bit better than just dumping all of the knowledge near the end. The acting though was good as were the effects. The soundtrack didn't necessarily stand out, but it really did fit for what they needed for sure. I found this to be an above average movie and would be interested in checking this out again to see what I might have missed.



My Rating: 7 out of 10





SPOILERS:

What I didn't want to reveal without warning first is that this is a zombie film. The group came together to try to find a cure before the infection went too rampant. Jonah is in charge of this with his brother Nathan. Sharon is Jonah's girlfriend. I believe that Michael is kind of a security detail to protect them as they have a lot of subjects that are infected living in the area to test their attempts at a cure to this infection. Lukas is one of them.

The marks on the arms of everyone is that attempt to administer a vaccine. Lukas doesn't have all of the information and turns on Jonah due to what he thinks he sees on a camera. Nathan didn't lock a door well enough so some of the infected have gotten out. They also only have two days until an extermination squad shows up.

This becomes problematic though as the vaccine seems to cause short-term memory loss. That explains why no one remembers anything at the start. It isn't a vaccine if you're already infected, which we see with Lukas is sinking back. Brown Eyes is also the key to a cure, as she is immune to it. I like this idea, but I just think it could have been presented a bit better as a lot what I'm stating here gets revealed with like 10 minutes left in the movie. I know it is a bit difficult to do, but just an issue I had with this first viewing. I'll definitely watch this again now knowing what I do.

Read more IMDb reviews

3 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment