Main cast: Dominic Purcell (Harris McKay), Josie Maran (Kira Hayden), Clare Kramer (Allison Mitchell), Marcus Thomas (Sid Vance), Tchéky Karyo (Vincent Cochet), and Megahn Perry (Frances Culpepper)
Director: Mike Mendez
In The Gravedancers, we have three friends from college who reunite on the day their friend is laid to rest. Harris McKay is a lawyer who is now married to Allison, but Kira had been stalking Harris long before that and it seems like she’s ready to restart the pursuit. The other friend, Sid, is the poor “joker” type of character who plays the third fiddle to these two.
They all get smashed that evening. While the three of them are drinking a toast in front of their late buddy’s grave, Sid discovers a card containing what seems like poem advocating one to live for the day. Believing that this is the perfect way to celebrate their friend’s passing, Sid gets the other two to join him in reciting the poem and dancing on a grave (backed by a radio that magically appears out of nowhere). The end result is disaster for all three of them.
As paranormal researchers Vincent Cochet and his assistant Frances Culpepper would explain later, the poem is actually an evocation spell, summoning the ghosts of the bodies buried in the graves that were danced on to haunt the morons for a month before killing them off for good. Sid, Harris, and Kira had the luck to be dancing on the graves of three “undesirables”. Sid gets a pyromaniac who set buildings on fire to kill the inhabitants, Kira gets a serial rapist and murderer, and Harris gets ax-murderer piano teacher. For reasons never explained in this story, though, it is Harris’s poor wife Allison that gets the bulk of the haunting compared to Harris when she didn’t even participate in the dancing. Then again, given Harris’s amazing stupidity, he probably didn’t notice anything even if he were haunted.
Is The Gravedancers supposed to be a horror film or a comedy? After watching this movie, I am leaning toward comedy because this one is hilarious. The serial rapist looks like Mr Burns from The Simpsons while the pyromaniac has the cutest and biggest head ever. Meanwhile, the crazy ax-murderer has the worst aim ever, I tell you. Throughout it all, Dominic Purcell demonstrates that he is possibly the worst actor in the world. He has only one facial expression in this movie, and he also has the burden to playing one of the most unpleasantly stupid and hateful lead characters ever in a horror film. Harris is so determined to disbelieve the haunting even after he has seen strange things happen with his own eyes, he’s hopeless. The only sane and likable character in this movie is Allison.
This movie starts out with some promise, but by the time the low-budget CGI comes in and starts turning this movie into a clown circus (hello, Mr Burns), the movie has officially lost the plot. The hilarious chase in the end involving the crazy ax-murderer who just keeps missing Harris for maximum hilarious effect seals the deal. Watch this for the laughs, not for the scares.
