People are voting emotionally.

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

A Major Disappointment

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

At Yamanashi International University in Japan, Maiko is struggling with her mother's suicide two months earlier in the 'suicide forest'. Amber leads a class project with Kyle and Terry to look for her body. Ghostly apparitions start appearing in the background. They see two policemen carry out a body. Cameras are not allowed. Lone hiker Jin warns them and offers to guide them to the supposed site. Three classmates play a prank on them.It's strange to shot in BC with a bunch of white young adults and call it Japan. Kaitlyn Leeb is at most half-Asian. I'm sure they could have picked one Asian as part of the group. Some of them are definitely cannon fodder anyways. It's great to have a solid actor like Hiro Kanagawa but it's not enough. The ghosts don't count. There are way too many idiotic dudes acting idiotically. This is a no-budget horror that starts with minor creepiness and then turns into overblown horror shlock.

In Japan, the college student Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb) grieves the loss of her mother, who committed suicide two weeks ago in the notorious "suicide forest". Maiko is seeking out her body and her friends Amber (Cassi Thomson) and Terry (Dejan Loyola) decide to make a documentary about her quest as school project. Terry invites his friend Kyle (Graham Wardle) to shoot their documentary and they head to the forest. On the arrival, they meet the lonely hiker Jin (Hiro Kanagawa), who asks them to leave the dead in peace and go away and stays with them. However they decide to search the spot and soon their college mates Skylar (Tom Stevens), Brody (Jesse Wheeler) and Craig (Jeffrey Ballard) play a prank on them. While returning to their car, the trio finds a dead body and Skyler steals a Rolex from his wrist. When Jin finds what they have done, he advises that they are doomed."Grave Halloween" is a horror movie with careful production, gloomy cinematography and good acting. Aokigahara, also known as the Suicide Forest or Sea of Trees does exist in Japan and "lies at the northwest base of Mount Fuji and has a historic association with demons in Japanese mythology and it is a notoriously common suicide site" (see Wikipedia - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aokigahara"). This place might be known by Japanese but is totally unknown for Westerns. Unfortunately the lead story explaining why the Japanese mother of the Western Maiko committed suicide does not work well. The explanation of her suicide is totally unreasonable. Further, if the characters were Japanese, the plot could work better; but the Japanese college shows only American students living a Japanese legend and gives the sensation of a phony plot. My vote is four.Title (Brazil): Not available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

For the SyFy Channel, who have produced countless bad movies with the odd tolerable one, Grave Halloween is not so bad at all. It is filmed and edited competently and the setting is quite creepy. The music does have the appropriate amount of eeriness, the death scenes are gory and really very chilling and the acting especially from Cassie Thomson and Hiro Kanagawa is above-average. Extra plaudits also for the details of Japan and the Japanese laws and customs being spot on, and for the homages paid to The Evil Dead, The Ring and The Blair Witch Project without blatantly ripping them off. Grave Halloween is not without its flaws though. The characters are not very well-defined at all and at the end of the day there's not really anybody despite the acting that you find yourself caring for. The dialogue lacks flow and can sound downright embarrassing at times("that's super comforting" is something you'd hear a stereotypical high school student say). And with the story, there is a good idea somewhere that is not translated quite so well on screen, the back-story and the Japanese culture are intriguing but the mystery and horror elements- which are more important- are not. The mystery elements are not paced very securely and feels too predictable and lacking in suspense and tension to really convince, and the horror suffers also from predictability and not everybody looking as though they properly care for their predicament. Grave Halloween wisely uses its special effects minimally, but when they are there at best they are just okay and too many times also rather shoddy. The ghosts evoke some chills, but did anybody else think that they looked a little more like zombies rather than ghosts? All in all for the SyFy Channel, Grave Halloween is not bad but as a movie taking that it's SyFy out of the equation for a minute it is one that is alright but left wanting. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Despite the title of this review sounding like a shot at this movie, I have to say this is a great film.I can't say going into this movie I had low expectations because I knew it was directed by Steven R. Monroe and I'll be the first to say I love his directing style. I really enjoyed his earlier works such as Sasquatch Mountain, Ogre, and Ice Twisters which I feel a lot of people looked down on based solely on the titles or some shoddy CGI.What Grave Halloween has in common with Steven R. Monroe movies is that it has a solid script, great character development, and some impressive cinematography (for the low budget).What separates Grave Halloween from Steven R. Monroe's earlier works is that you rarely notice you're watching a low-budget film when sitting through this movie. There is very little CGI in this film (there are some CGI flies near the end), but it's at least passable. The director took advantage of the budget by incorporating some very gruesome, even frighteningly realistic practical gore effects. Steven R. Monroe also makes great use of the setting of this movie, which appears to be filmed all in one location, by using incredible overhead shots of the forest and just beautiful cinematography of the area in general.Speaking of the setting, one of the reasons I was able to feel so immersed in this movie was because of how authentic it looked. I didn't check to see where this movie was filmed, but if it was filmed in America or some English speaking country then the director did an excellent job of hiding that. Of course, this is coming from a guy who doesn't speak a word of Korean (this movie takes place in Korea) so for all I know it could be in another eastern Asian country, but regardless it was a very believable setting for the story. The details such as the fact the car the characters took to get to the Suicide Forest had its steering wheel on the right side of the car did numbers to make this feel more like a story and less like a script if that makes sense.The tone of this movie is really chilling and works so well with the limited resources in both the budget and setting. I stated earlier that this movie has great cinematography and that's true, but this movie isn't just one big, beautiful string of cinematography either because that would take away from the tone. This movie is extremely atmospheric and has the perfect amount of lighting in both the day and night shots to create a consistently eerie vibe throughout.As the story progressed I felt more and more invested in the plot like I HAD to know what happened next. The first half of this movie is well- paced and exciting, but it's not until the second half that this film starts throwing some twists at you and really starts to pull you toward the edge of your seat.All that being said, I'll then go to say this: I think this is Steven R. Monroe's best Syfy Original Movie he's directed (but not necessarily his best all together). However, I will give one slight criticism, and that is that this movie didn't quite seem as complete as some of his others. Steven R. Monroe's films such as Sasquatch Mountain, Ogre, and Left in Darkness all did a phenomenal job in delivering closure to the story with a limited budget. Grave Halloween, while I did like its ending in a way, didn't feel as satisfying as some of Steven R. Monroe's other works. There seemed to be some loose ends that went untied when this movie was over.The ending is up to interpretation I suppose, and the small amount of disappointment had with the ending is no reason why you shouldn't check this B-Movie gem out for its solid entertainment and genuine creepiness throughout most of it.I highly recommend this movie for horror fans. I personally think it's a much more well-made movie than recent theatrical horror movies such as Insidious or Sinister, but see it for yourself.9/10