17: Gravedancers

For a film that takes itself so seriously throughout, Gravedancers has one campy premise. After one of them dies in a car accident, a group of old high school friends get together to mourn him. In an attempt to relive their old school days, they go and do something stupid: namely breaking into the cemetery in the middle of the night for some drunken mourning. One thing leads to another, and they wind up angering evil spirits by dancing on their graves. While I don't mind campy films at all, this film is so serious and well done that the fact that it sounds so silly makes it hard for a film like this to have an audience.

After the funeral, The films follow Harris (dominic Purcell) and his wife Allison (Clare Kramer) and manages to build a sense of dread quite effectively. It starts out with the full suite of ghostly gimmicks: Creaky pipes, stuff moving on its own accord, and mysterious hangup calls. The wife is convinced that the person responsible for the calls is Kira (Josie Maran), one of Harris' old flames. She becomes increasingly paranoid that Kira is stalking her husband. Clare Kramer really sells it, I like her character a lot. After a break-in in their house, Allison forces Harris to go to Kira's house and confront her. That's when the real movie starts.

Kira is half dead, her house is completely demolished. She is delusional, bruised and battered. She is being attacked by one of the ghosts. The scenes where she is attacked are some of the film's most affecting. They really sell both the brutality of the attacks and the helplessness of being beaten by something you can't see. When Harris tries to get rest of the gang together to see what is going he finds that Sid (Marcus Thomas) had actually hired a group of paranormal investigators to try to help them. After this point, the film really takes off. They creature effects are quite good for an independent film. The spirits have these massive grins on them full time that makes them look quite demented. These aren't your typical melancholy specters, they like their work.

This film was bundled as part of the After Dark Horrorfest, what was originally billed as independent horror films that were “too scary for theaters,” but in actuality was more like “ cheap films we can bundle together and sell to completionists for profit.” But each horrorfest has 3 or 4 movies worth watching, and one or two that are really good. The Gravedancers is one of the best films in the original Horrorfest, which actually had some stiff competition for best movie. Watching through a bunch of horrorfest films is a nice way to spend day, and you can expect to see the After Dark Horrorfest make this list at least one more time.