Tockinit
not horrible nor great
Kidskycom
It's funny watching the elements come together in this complicated scam. On one hand, the set-up isn't quite as complex as it seems, but there's an easy sense of fun in every exchange.
Roman Sampson
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
Staci Frederick
Blistering performances.
jlthornb51
Director Stephen R. Monroe actually shot this film in Canada but he has captured all that is Japan with incredible power and accuracy. Featuring a very strong cast and with a script that depicts the grimness of the forest with stunning terror, this is a film that is deeply disturbing as well has horror laden. It is the environment of sheer horror and overwhelming angst that will engulf the audience in a dark cloud of unrelenting dread that grips up to the startling conclusion. Beautifully written and expertly realized with artistic vision, Grave Halloween is a film that will be appreciated by horror fanatics and general viewers alike. A Haunting and Powerful motion picture experience.
TdSmth5
Some half-Japanese girl named Maiko (pronounced "Michael" in the movie) wants to find the place where her mother committed suicide to give her a proper burial. She has nightmares and visions of a forest, of her childhood. Along for the ride come some friends of hers, foreign exchange students in Japan, who are going to...film the whole thing for a class project. Off they go then to the suicide forest, a forest in Japan where lots of people commit suicides by hanging themselves from trees. All they have to go by is a picture she has of the tree where her mother killed herself. I guess Maiko thinks it shouldn't be too hard to find a single tree in a forest. Who took the picture of the tree we don't know. She also has a box with two pieces of jewelry that belonged to the mother. She needs those for whatever ceremony she's going to perform that night, which happens to be Halloween night.When they arrive, they find a sign that bans cameras, still they film. They hide from police (why police?) that removes the corpses. And then they meet the strange stranger who knows about the forest, who makes sinister pronouncements, who warns them not to do this or that, and who recognizes (!) the tree and will guide them to it. But quickly they run into some classmates who pull a prank on them. The pranksters then go their way and run into trouble. They steal a watch from a deceased man in a tent (?). But then the guy who takes the watch is attacked. The other guys run back to the other group. At this point it's night.Maiko starts seeing things, we get to see some flashbacks from her youth about her mother, her violent father, and her sister. The stranger disappears. Maiko and the cameraguy end up arrested and handcuffed in the police station's morgue (?). Then something kills the cop, they escape, they find the tree, and more ghosts. Some of the other kids end up in trouble and injured. Then the sun comes up.Grave Halloween has a good concept. It has a gorgeous setting. The Canadian forest they used is truly beautiful. The scenes filmed during the girl's childhood also look stunning. Overall, direction is very good. But that's all this movie has going for it. While making a movie about a real-life suicide forest sounds like a good idea, you've got to have a good script to work out the idea. And here's it just doesn't work out. It's not easy making a movie about a ghost story and this one sure doesn't succeed. Things get messy and unclear. The ending comes out of nowhere. Nothing is answered. The childhood scenes don't clarify things either but create more questions. And finally a fatal flaw is the weak lead actress.
Michael_Elliott
Grave Halloween (2013) * 1/2 (out of 4)A young woman (Kaitlyn Leeb) agrees to be a part of a documentary covering a mysterious forest in Japan known as "Suicide Forest." This place is known for countless suicides that have happened there including the girl's mother but while the group tries to determine the cause, they soon realize that angry spirits are there. GRAVE HALLOWEEN, on a technical level, is actually rather impressive and supports some rather gory death scenes and some fine performances but there's still no doubt that it's just a weak imitation of some much better movies. This pretty much plays like a cross between THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, THE RING and just about any other Japanese ghost movie. The biggest problem is that the thing just isn't scary and all the "jump" scenes just don't add up to anything. There are countless times in the film where the documentary makers spot something on their camera and these scenes are meant to make us jump. Well, they never do and instead of being scary they just seem rather forced and eventually boring. As the film moves along we get to some rather bloody death scenes and these are especially gory when you consider this was made for television. Another thing working against the picture is that once the mystery starts to play out you realize that you simply don't care about anything going on or anyone involved. As I said, the performances are better than average with Cassi Thomson really standing out among the cast. Hiro Kanagawa is also very good in his role as a man who leads the group through the woods. Director Steven R. Monroe (I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE) knows how to shoot a film and make it look profession, there's no question about that but hopefully his talents will be used for a better picture.
GL84
Setting off into Aokigahara Forest, a teen and her friends' mission to put to rest her lingering fears of her mother's death put them into danger when the restless spirits of the dead around them take out their anger on the group for their attitudes toward them and must find a way of stopping them.This here turned out to be quite an entertaining and enjoyable effort that gets a lot of great points about it. One of the better elements here is the use of the local custom that plays such a central part of the storyline that it really starts to feel as though the events could happen to play out as they do. Being that this is Japanese the culture and heritage of honoring one's deceased echoes throughout this one in so many ways that the great pride it places on the subject earns the eventual rampage from the ghosts later on once the mocking had been committed. It's all completely justified and rational, and that makes the ghostly actions all the more fun with several incredibly chilling gags, from simply transporting you to a different dimensional plane of reality without realizing it in order to prevent their friends from finding them in time to prevent your death, vanishing behind trees, rocks or landscape changes to avoid detection, putting your own thoughts against you and making you do something against your will or just flat- out attacking you with their ghostly powers in vicious, brutal attacks. By doing this in such a chilling and creepy location, almost seemingly filmed at the real forest itself as the attention to minute features of the area makes for an absolutely chilling, creepy area to remain the entire time, and offers up plenty of suspense from the landscape itself. With a fast pace that keeps things moving along briskly, a couple of brutal and quite bloody deaths dished out, a real sense of danger when it comes to the treatment of the cast since they're all in the firing line at some point and not too many flaws here, this is a spectacular, stand-out effort.Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.