Juju Jumanji
Jason (Mike Vogel), his hottie friend Erica (Eliza Dushku) and surfer friends were planning on a major raver on the beach till they were forced to abandon their fun due to a storm and take it inside where Jason talks them in to playing an ancient board game which he has been handed by a weird guy in a back street shop. What none of them know is that the parts of the game are the remains of a medieval witch. With the game promising the winner a wish whilst the losers doomed to die the friends ignore the warnings to play only to find themselves battling an ancient curse when one of them dies and then one by one they get picked off in a way described on the cards.
Dude where's your brain, that is what the little voice in my head was screaming within minutes of "Open Graves" starting as the characters are hideously bad, delivering moronic lines which I don't think work in anyone's world. But I persisted despite the voice in my head was getting louder because I know it is shallow but I like Eliza Dushku. I wish I listened to my head rather than something else because "Open Graves" is not worst the time.
So yes "Open Graves" is another one of those movies which gives us the board game which takes over real life with in this case people ending up killed, not quick enough for my liking, and so these people are picked off one by one. It is such a familiar storyline that there needs to be something really special for this to standout and doing a bit of "Final Destination" is not the way to go. But whilst there are some decent special effects, and some bad ones, the up close camera work is painful and doesn't generate the atmosphere it is trying for.
But in truth the camera work could be great and the movie would still suck as the dialogue is terrible, the acting is horrible and the characters are even worse. It means that the only thing on your mind from early on is the hope that the death scenes are good. But even those are bad and let me just ask; if you were driving along a quite road at night for a beer run and needed to take a slash would you do so hidden by your car or walk to the cliff top where you could end up going over?
What this all boils down to is that "Open Graves" is an open mess which is only about the one thing which is the graphic nature of the death scenes. Beyond that it has nothing and that makes it one slog of a movie.
