Grave Halloween (2013) starring Kaitlyn Leeb, Cassi Thomson, Graham Wardle, Dejan Loyola, Jeffrey Ballard directed by Steven R. Monroe Movie Review

Grave Halloween (2013)   3/53/53/53/53/5


Kaitlyn Leeb in Grave Halloween (2013)

I See Asian Ghost Girl Zombies

Having suffered bad dreams surrounding her mother's suicide, Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb) plans to head to suicide forest in Japan to take a box of her mother's possessions and perform a ritual to free her spirit. Going along with her is friend Amber (Cassi Thomson) who along with Terry (Dejan Loyola) and Kyle (Graham Wardle) are filming this trip for a school documentary. But after entering the never-ending forest they find themselves stuck there with a host of angry spirits, a man who offers to help as well as a couple of cops.

"Grave Halloween" is one of those horror movies where age matters as the younger you are the more effective it probably is. But the older you are and depending on your horror movie experience it will end up mostly another walk through a familiar concept with just a couple of twists. To put that in to context; Kaitlyn Leeb is an attractive actress but having watched countless other horror movies with an attractive looking lead you end up less impressed that they found an attractive actress for the lead role in this especially when Leeb is unable to make her mark on the movie because the character of Maiko is non-descript.

So what goes on in "Grave Halloween" also suffers from that sense of familiarity as teenagers stuck in the woods, terrorized by something which lives there be it of this world or the spirit world is not great. Yes we have the twist that what they are terrorized by are a mix between classic zombies and scary Asian ghost girls but that isn't as great as it sounds and in many ways sticking to the scary Asian ghost girl idea would have been better than trying to evolve it into zombies.

The one thing which "Grave Halloween" kind of has going for it is the twist, yes inevitably there is a twist and whilst it doesn't manage to turn this movie around at least it tries. Although if I was being honest I kind of predicted where this would lead before it happened and I am not the only one as others have realised the same thing.

What this all boils down to is that "Grave Halloween" is one of those horror movies whose effectiveness in many ways relies on an audiences inexperience of the horror genre. If you are a fan of horror movies this is unlikely to get you talking about it other than commenting on how routine it all is.


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