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Reviews
Open Grave (2013)
A good concept, some well worked scenes, but the film never managed to climb all the way out of the grave it began in.
The film's opening takes you from you seat and places you in the full horror of waking up in an open grave of dead bodies with no memory of how you got there.
The cinematography is ambitious, the music and sound are used subtly and with good effect, and the film's first quarter drags you in well and you want to know on earth happened just as much as the characters in the film. But as they begin to interact, it all goes wrong. The dialogue is forced and unnatural, their decision making strange, and the American accent by South African Sharlto Copley distracts, especially when you are trying to understand someone who has just woken up not knowing who he is.
As the film gets past the hallway point, it loses its direction. It feels like a collection of scenes pasted together sloppily than an evolving narrative, and by the time the truth is revealed you have already stopped caring.