Open Grave

Year: 2013
Genre: Mystery thriller
Director: Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego


Plot: A man wakes up in a pit full of dead bodies with no memory of how he got there. Subsequently he finds a group of people with the same memory loss, and they all have to work together and set their doubts aside to figure out who killed those people and why.


The gist: Throw six strangers together who are as much in the dark about what's happening as we are and Open Grave seems Hitchcockian in nature. 

There is a pit of dead bodies that our protagonist, who can't recall his name, finds himself in. He climbs out, finds more people in the same predicament, and has to figure out what's really going on. The others are able to identify themselves because they have their ID on them, but not our John Doe, which puts him as the prime suspect. Then the group start finding really strange things, like a room full of guns, dead bodies tied to the trees outside, a few wild humans lurking around, and the significance of April 18th, which is coming real soon.

Director Gonzalo Lopez-Gallego and writers Chris and Eddie Borey have successfully created a film set within a gruesome, if not consistently tense atmosphere. This is one of those films where you have to stay to the end to know the whole truth, and Lopez-Gallego more often than not manages to keep us guessing.


The good: The cast perform well, especially Sharlto Copley as our John Doe and Josie Ho as a mute Asian woman who has trouble communicating with the group. Credit also goes to the set design team for creating a scary place for our characters to find themselves in.

The bad: When the truth was finally revealed, I found that the idea of their memory loss and the Asian woman being mute was much too convenient, and without it the film's plot would not have worked as well as it did. The revelation was good though, I'll give them that.


Verdict: Open Grave is a solid thriller worth checking out. (7/10)

Slow West

Year: 2015
Genre: Western
Director: John Maclean


Plot: A young Scottish lad travels to America to search for a woman he loves, and in the process meets a bounty hunter who agrees to be his guide.


The gist: I figured that since it won an award at the Sundance Film Festival, Slow West would be worth checking out. But I was wrong.

The film tells the story of Jay Cavendish, a young man from Scotland who travels to America to find a woman that he loves, Rose Ross. His naivety almost gets him killed when he is rescued by Silas, a bounty hunter who agrees to help him on his journey in return for some money. Along the way, the two men meet an assortment of characters, the most dangerous of them being Payne, leader of a gang Silas was once a part of.


The good: The film has some good cinematography to depict the mountains of Colorado, using New Zealand as a stand-in. Michael Fassbender is good as Silas, and Kodi Smit-McPhee is convincing as the naive Jay. There is a tense scene in a sundry shop which is probably the best part of the film.

The bad: Despite running at a short 84 minutes, I found the film really taxing to sit through. Writer-director John Maclean plods the story along without a clear direction instead of developing his characters properly to make it interesting. While keeping things as simple as possible might work for some films, it does not work here. I wanted to know more about Silas and Payne, and their past together, but instead Maclean shows flashbacks of Jay and Rose, more than once. The final shootout scene was also disappointing and unnecessarily tragic. And Jay's character just wasn't endearing on a whole, to be honest.


Verdict: Slow West had potential, but it was near totally wasted here. Maybe a lot of people like this kind of thing, but not me. (5/10)