Review by Karolina Gruschka
With having ‘Halloween’ in the film title and being released on the run up to this particular holiday, it would imply that what you get is a horror story set in front of a backdrop of Pagan shenanigans. However, while Grave Halloween has the element of solemn customs, remembering the dead and warding off evil spirits, these are not presented in the cultural context one would expect at first. This Canadian production is set in Japan, addressing Eastern mythology and ceremony but from a Western non-privy perspective. Four international students at Yamanashi International University set off for the infamous Aokigahara, or suicide forest, north west of Mt Fuji on the day of Halloween. Equipped with a camera and boom mic, Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb), Amber (Cassi Thomson), Terry (Dejan Loyola) and Kyle (Graham Wardle) seek not cheap thrills, but to help Amber complete her uni project, and help Maiko come to terms with her past.
Maiko was adopted as a child because her mother (Maiko Miyauchi) had been struggling with mental health issues. Two months prior to the time Grave Halloween is set, her birth mother commits suicide by hanging herself from a distinctive tree in the Sea of Trees Aokigahara. All Maiko possesses of her is a vague memory and a box comprising jewellery, a good-bye letter and a photo of the suicide tree. Instead of harbouring hard feelings against her mother, Maiko wants to honour her by performing a segaki ceremony*, which is meant to give her soul eternal peace. Maiko lets buddy Amber exploit her very personal story for a documentary project, because she feels that the act of recording will render the mother she barely knew more real. However, Amber seems to be more concerned with milking the melodramatic aspect of Maiko’s circumstances than being sensitive to her feelings.
The group enters the forest with greenhorn naïvety, certain to have the right intentions, but lacking drastically awareness of (and consequently, respect for) local customs and beliefs. Personally, I have experienced first hand what it means to mock the spirits, and let me assure you, it did not end well. Yet, I got to live to learn my lesson, whereas Aokigahara’s yurei or restless ghosts are less forgiving. If only they would have taken local forest walker Jin’s (Hiro Kanagawa) warnings seriously, the dark energies of the forest might have spat them back out into the material world…
On the DVD cover it is stated that Grave Halloween is based on a true story. This is most probably not actually referring to the occurrences in the movie, but the fact that the Japanese suicide forest does exist. As the ‘perfect place to die’, the trees by Mt Fuji witness yearly around 80 deaths. Maiko mentions in the film Matsumoto’s Kuroi Jukai, which is a novel that reinstated the forest’s popularity among the fatally desperate. The pervasiveness of suicides combined with the fact that the forest floor is composed of volcanic rock whose magnetic properties interfere with compasses, has spawned myths about considerable supernatural activities in Aokigahara. Once you enter, you may never leave again, or in the film character Jin’s words: “Sometimes you get lost in the forest, sometimes the forest loses you.”
I would not say that Grave Halloween is a quality horror film production (well, it was made for SyFy), but it was certainly entertaining enough for me to watch it twice. The idea of setting the story in a different cultural context keeps it interesting. The film may not go into depth with the particular belief system, yet from this little glimpse I learned something new about Far Eastern customs. So even if just for that reason, it turned out not to be a waste of time. Usually, I feel sceptical towards Westerners approaching Eastern subject matters, but it works alright for Grave Halloween since the characters themselves are outsiders who cannot seem to grasp the cultural specificities, nuances and differences. The group of students fails to recognize the severity of their actions until it is too late.
That said, Grave Halloween was, in my opinion, drawing too much on cultural references to the circle of Japanese horror films (and their remakes) around the late 1990s and early noughties, including movies like The Ring or Dark Water. It covers everything from creepy long haired girl, over regurgitating hair, to insects exiting/entering bodily orifices; most of it gets thrown at the viewer towards the end within a fairly short time frame. This results in Grave Halloween coming across as highly cliched, unfortunately, and ultimately leads to the twist(s) losing impact, as it becomes very predictable.
Grave Halloween is not demanding on the viewer and therefore perfect for a rainy Autumn afternoon. If you are looking for a genuine Halloween scare, reserve this movie for another day. But here’s some advice from Jin to take on board during the ghostly season: “You mock the spirits, the joke will be on you!”
*Segaki is a Buddhist ceremony where the living generations pay respect to their ancestors and aid them in reaching salvation by making offerings, burning incense and doing chants. In Japan, this event occurs around mid-summer, however, in North America it was moved to coincide with Halloween. It appears to be a custom that is comparable to, for instance, All Saints or Dia de los Muertos.
Steven R. Monroe’s (the director of the I Spit on Your Grave remakes, uh-oh!) Grave Halloween will be released digitally and on DVD on the 27th October 2014, from Kaleidoscope.