Grave Halloween: Horror Movie review

An American foreign exchange student studying in Japan, finds out that her birth mother has killed herself in a mystical place in Japan called the Suicide Forest. Before killing herself, her mother sends the girl a box full of personal items with instructions to come to the forest and perform a burial ceremony that will allow her to rest peacefully. Unfortunately, she comes to the forest with a handful of jackass friends who anger the restless spirits, despite being warned not to disturb, disrespect, or steal any personal items from the dead. The whole gang of kids end up being cursed and hunted by the dead and start to die off one by one.

This is a clash of cultures type of movie, the Americans are portrayed as shallow and materialistic, while the Japanese are portrayed as thoughtful and more spiritual. For a made for TV movie, it was much better than I expected. One of the "twists" of the movie was fairly obvious and most will see it coming a mile away. There is a second twist at the end that is not expected and quite good. There are no famous people in this movie, you likely won't know any of them, but they were all competent actors. The movie was suppose to be set in Japan, but was filmed in Vancouver, BC, Canada and the area is visually stunning, you know, when it isn't raining. Overall, a really enjoyable movie that I will watch again.

7.2 out of 10 for me.

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The Conjuring: Horror Movie Review

The Conjuring is another one of those "based on a true story" type of horror movies. Honestly, they should call it a "based on what some nutcase claims to be a true story" horror movie, but I digress. When I review this type of movie I have to be careful to review the movie and not the people behind the movie because I have little to no respect for the majority of people out there that call themselves paranormal investigators. They are almost always exploiting people with mental issues, or they are just looking for fame in the cheapest way possible. That said, The Conjuring is not a bad movie, as long as you take the claims of "this really happened" with a grain of salt.

The movie has your typical haunted house setup. A family moves into an old house that is just too good of a deal to pass up and find that the basement has been sealed up. Of course, the family go down and check it out and disturb the evil spirit that lives there. Soon weird things start to happen and the family can't figure out what is going on. One day, the mother finds that the youngest child has a new imaginary friend. At first, she doesn't seem that bothered by it, kids will be kids, but eventually the kid's obsession with this new friend gets to the point where mom wonders if she needs to get medical help for her child. Yeah, you've seen it all before. As the story progresses the mother and father come to the realization the house might in fact be haunted and they go and seek help. A husband and wife team show up at the house and decide that they must perform an exorcism on the house. They set up cameras and get to work with the holy water and the religious blessing and they anger the evil spirit. Eventually, they find that they are in an all out battle with a demon to save the family from being killed.

Like I said before, you have to take the whole it's true thing with a grain of salt because if it was in fact true, why did they not add some real footage to the film. I would love to see the part where they have the mother tied to a chair because she is possessed and all of a sudden the chair starts to levitate and spin the woman in circles. Footage like that would go a long way towards proving that there really are demons out there. Naturally, no such footage is included in the movie.

The movie is well acted though, except for the guy playing the dad, he was not believable as a human being, and the tone and score of the movie added to some of the creepy vibe. There are also a few good "startle" scares. Nothing unique, or groundbreaking here, but a fun movie overall for horror fans.

7.5 out of 10 for me.