Open Graves

The beginning of this movie is rather bazaar.  It begins with a scene out of the Spanish Inquisition and someone is being tortured.  Fingernails are being ripped out.  Bodies are being stabbed.  A real gore fest, ... then ... surfing.  Don't ask me, I just watch them.

 

Present day Spain, a group of twenty somethings are surfing and partying.  One guy is a photographer, who shoots bikini models for calendars.  He has a friend that works with him on the shoots.  He is also dating one model as he bangs another.  Another buddy of his is in graduate school and all of them meet up with another girl who fits in somehow.

 

The blond guy is given this board game by a legless man.  The game has a legend behind it.  It was fashioned from the skin of a witch and inked with her blood and tears.  The rules of the game are simple.  You are not playing against one another, but rather against the game.  If you die in the game, you die in real life.  If you win the game, you get one wish granted to you.  SPOILER ALERT: The blond guy wins the game, but he doesn't word his wish well and everyone repeats their actions.

 

The players die in order of how early they left the game.  The first guy out, falls off of a cliff and then gets partially eaten by crabs.  The second guy gets bitten by snakes.  The third is a girl, who dies of rapid old age.  And so on.

 

Along the way, the survivors find the legless man now has legs, courtesy of the game.  It came at the cost of his brother's life, but he now has legs.  The cop who is assigned to the case is also interested in the game.  He wants to try and win back the lives of his wife and child.

 

The story is fair.  I thought that there could have been a little more back story to the game, but it is not totally necessary to the plot.  The gore was at a minimum and the digital effects were fine.  It was just hard to care for the characters.  The blond guy and the newly met surfer girl are the ones that are able to solve the game.  That's fine, ... but they have known each other less than a week and seem to be together a lot more than most new acquaintances.

 

It this movie worth a one-time viewing?  Sure.  Will it be enjoyable?  I can't really say.  About the only cool scene that I liked, was when the legless guy grew his legs back.  That is about the only scene that I would watch again.  That and the opening.  Everything else was a time filler to me.

 

I give this movie 1 out of 5 lumber yards.

Beneath Still Waters

This movie is an adaptation from a novel.  It says so right in the beginning of the movie.  I'll never read the book after seeing this movie.

The story is not that bad.  In 1965, an evil man by the name of Mordecai Salas has learned black magic and has begun taking over the town of Marienbad, Spain.  In order to combat the evil that Salas is spreading, the town is flooded when a new dam is put into operation.  But before the town is flooded, two boys go playing in the town and one boy unknowingly sets Salas free.  And the boy pays with his life when Salas rips his head apart at the jaw.

Fast forward 40 years.

The town is going to celebrate the Debaria Dam and the mayor does not want anything to get in the way of the celebration.  So when a man drowns in the lake, it is deemed an accident.  But we know different.  There is a funny part of this scene when the blond (Susana) comes out of the water after a swim and has been entangled by some black seaweed, she immediately grabs her cigarettes.  I don't know why I thought that was funny, but I did.

A photojournalist, Dan Quarry, arrives into town.  Not to photograph the celebration, but to photograph the town that was flooded.  Some odd occurances happen and Dan is forced into helping with save the town.  And he does.  And everybody is happy.

The gore doesn't happen until very late in the movie when the town reverts back to its evil ways and a police officer performs some self mutilation.  As he hobbles along, he shouts, "You're under arrest!" to a woman trying to locate her daughter.  It's weak at best.

For the most part, I enjoyed the movie.  The story moved along well, but there were some scenes that could have been avoided.  The movie also could have used a bit more needless violence for my taste as well.  The nudity was at a minimum.  Susana is so broken up about her friend Antonio drowning, that she decides to get nude and have "one last swim together" with him.  He comes out of the water and chews through her neck.  Just like she wanted.

I give this movie 2 out of 5 Captain Lightning comic books.