This double feature release on Blu-ray includes Open Graves and 100 Feet, two relatively unknown horrors. Although they are
not the world’s best horror films, they do offer the viewer a few hours
of escapism for those cold and dark winter nights. The first film stars Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
and Mike Vogel who are the main
protagonists of the film and are holidaying with their surfing friends
in Spain. However as kismet intervenes with the group, they come into
possession of an ancient game from the Spanish Inquisition. Apparently
this game, called Mamba was created from the bones and skin of
an executed witch and during a drunken night of partying, the group
decide to give this game a shot. Unbeknown to them, if you lose a game
of Mamba, you will need to dig your own grave, however the
winner is granted a wish. Not very good odds in my opinion!
Without
spoiling the film, Open Graves is quite clichéd at times and
plays out like a Final Destination movie and if only Milton & Bradley
were around in the Spanish Inquisition, they could have made a fortune
from Mamba. I can just see the commercial now! The problem with Open
Graves is that the plot is too over the top and obviously targets
Generation Y from its almost MTV like cinematography and characters.
Even with Eliza Duskku in the film, you really don’t care about the
characters and you start rooting for the board game curse to hurry up.
To compound the situation, the CGI looks really bad on Blu-ray and even
though it’s quite gory at times, I chuckled out loud at some of the
situations that the characters were forced to endure. It’s definitely
the weaker film of the two.
The second movie,
100 Feet stars the beautiful Famke Janssen
as Marnie Watson, a woman who has just been released from prison for the murder of
her violent husband Mike (Michael Pare). As the crime was more self defence than
planned, Marnie has been given the chance of spending the remainder of her
sentence in home detention. As the NYPD install a bracelet on her ankle,
she is free to move around her home, however if she moves more than her
allocated 100 feet, the police will be alerted if she spends more than 3
minutes away from her area. If this occurs, she will be forced to spend
10-years in jail as opposed to 1-year at home.
As Marnie attempts to move on, she decides to pack her abusive husbands
belongings away and after a few nights, she sees the unthinkable, a
ghost of her husband. Eventually this ghost turns up his attacks and
just like when he was alive, he begins to physically and emotionally
abuse his wife. Her husband’s police partner, Shanks (Bobby Cannavale) suspects that there is more
to this crime than meets his eyes and from here a psychological game
begins of the natural versus the supernatural. Although I enjoyed this
movie, there were several issues that peeved me off that included the
stupidity of Shanks as a character, not to mention the bad acting from
Cannavale.
Then you get another scene where Marnie gives a priest, a large substantial
amount of money and when she asks him to bless her house, he basically
says no. I know if this was me, I’d be asking for that money back. Apart
from this, I still enjoyed 100 Feet and Jensen excels at her
character and she puts on a great Brooklyn accent.
The video and audio quality on Blu-ray is nothing to write home about
and the only issue I had with the high definition video were the CGI
from both movies that looked more video game than Hollywood movie. Both
movies did make good use of the surround sound aspect and we jumped on
more than one occasion from a loud noise here and there. There are no
extras on this disc (Trailer), however two movies for the price of one? They may
not be the best horror movies around but they did have their moments
which I begrudgingly give them.
