Grave Halloween

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.

Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb, Isabelle Beech as a child) is an American studying in Japan. She has disturbing dreams about a woman searching for her daughter, calling out for her. This may be because she's beginning a quest to find her birth mother (Maiko Miyauchi).

Joining her in her search is a student video team that will document her journey – producer Amber (Cassie Thomson), cameraman Kyle (Graham Wardle), and sound man Terry (Dejan Loyola).

The group is given a warning about the Yure ("YOU-ray," the restless souls of the suicide victims ) by a wanderer named Jin (Hiro Kanagawa), who knows the forest well and agrees to help them find where Maiko's mother committed suicide.

Takeaway lesson: Do not ... Repeat, DO NOT ... enter the Suicide Forest under any circumstances.

This is a SyFy Channel movie that has all the scary elements of a Japanese "obake" (ghost) story. The acting and story are okay, and actually, compared to other SyFy movies I've seen, Grave Halloween is not bad. But, the problem with SyFy movies is that they are so predictable. That's this one's problem, and this time, there's no familiar veteran actor/actress to "legitimize" the movie.

The movie has only a slight relevance to Halloween, but SyFy Channel exploited that to make the movie part of their "31 Days of Halloween" observance. Pretty tacky, huh?

GRAVE HALLOWEEN has an EXCELLENT setting: the real life Aokigahara Forest in Japan, also known as the Sea of Trees or the Suicide Forest. It's a place at the foot of Mount Fuji where people commonly go to kill themselves, a bit like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A shame, then, that this low budget ghost flick was filmed in a Canadian wood instead; despite the attempts at authenticity this is a film that feels fake throughout (a Japanese university entirely inhabited by westerners doesn't help).

In any case, the story turns out to be a disappointment as well. A teenage girl and her buddies travel into the forest to discover the site of her mother's suicide, only to find themselves picked off messily one by one by a vengeful spirit. Yes, it's the usual long-haired Japanese ghost nonsense again, except it lacks any kind of thrills whatsoever in this Canadian TV movie. You have the SyFy Channel to thank for that.

The script is derivative, the dialogue a disappointment. The mangled childhood tragedy, revealed through poorly-edited flashbacks, is a non-starter, and there isn't a single member of the cast to get interested in either. The mildly Asian-looking American actress in the lead role, Kaitlyn Leeb, is best known for playing the three-breasted woman in the TOTAL RECALL remake, so that gives you some idea of her acting ability...

"Grave Halloween" is sort of a very odd mixture between Japanese and Western horror. And the end result is entertaining enough, although not particular scary.

The story is about a group of Americans in Japan, who venture into a forest that is known for the high number of suicides that have been taking place there. Maiko (played by Kaitlyn Leeb) is there to return her dead mother's belongings and to perform a ceremony to grant the spirit of her dead mother final rest. The forest seems to be unending and plays tricks on those who venture inside.

As entertaining as "Grave Halloween" was, then the movie never really got off more than a mediocre launch. The hybrid between traditional Japanese ghost movies and Western horror didn't really pan out as nicely as it could have been. And as much as I enjoy zombie movies, then the spirits haunting the forest should have been ghost entities, but they were more zombie than ghosts. And this ultimately took something away from the story.

The acting in the movie was alright, given the story and the script that the actors and actresses had to work with. Kaitlyn Leeb really carried the movie quite nicely.

"Grave Halloween" is actually one of the more nice SyFy horror movies, but it was just lacking something crucial to make it outstanding.

If you enjoy the SyFy original movie line and are somewhat familiar with the Asian ghost cinema, then "Grave Halloween" could be entertaining for you. It was well worth a single watch, although the movie hardly has enough material to sustain more than a single viewing.

"Grave Halloween" scores a mediocre 5 out of 10 stars.

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.