Grave Mistake

Bought a horror movie pack and this was one was in the bundle, so I thought OK I'll give it a try. My goodness! I wish I could rewind my mind along with everyone who was present in watching this film with me. I understand the idea of making films on little or no budgets (i.e. Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity) but this is absolutely horrible writing and some of the worst special effects I have ever seen. I teach at a elementary school and have seen better effects by the kids in the magnet program. I usually don't write reviews but something about this movie rubbed me the wrong way with it's perversions and mockery of the mentally handicap along with underlying racism. I also looked up the writer, director, producer, editor Shawn Darling and found that he has been making movies and doing special effects for years, so there is really no excuse as to why he would make such a terrible film. I would strongly suggest he try a alternate profession. Do not waste your time or money on this film.

This is just a really bad movie. I tried to find something in it worth liking, but I couldn't find anything. The actors are wooden, several of the actors seem to be faking accents and voices or trying to sound like different people, there are incidents and moments that are completely implausible and the production is just overall dreadful. If you look beyond the zombies, it just doesn't look like a zombie apocalypse. It looks like an abandoned town. The first few minutes of the film defy explanation. A guy goes out and dumps toxic waste on a gravesite without any reason. Is he a jerk? Does he have a grudge on the deceased? Is he just bored and trying something he saw in a zombie movie? It's not explained. From there, the film just kind of limps along introducing several of the weakest most boring stereotypes I've ever seen. No one in this film is worth rooting for, and when the "apocalypse" finally occurs, no one really makes any attempts to save themselves. The rest of "Grave Mistake" just limps along after that. Bottom line, you can really see the cheap production in this, and when it finally ends, there's really no big interest in this silly script. Maybe if they made it a comedy it might have been better, but all the references and allusions to other much better zombie flicks isn't enough to save this. .

Shawn Darling literally did everything on this film, director, music etc. You name it he had a hand in it.

I really enjoyed this effort and it delivered, for me, all that I was expecting, and more.

A group of people have to fight off the undead. That's about it really.

Lets start with some of the characters. Seth Darling (obviously related to the director) plays Alex a young boy that is abused by his step father and finds himself with, his abuser, in the group of survivors. A good performance from him. Then there's Monika (Wendy Andrews) the gutsy female survivor who is a love interest to Mike. She's so tough that she hardly bat's an eyelid when her son turns into a zombie and has his head blown off a few feet away from her!!! James Blackburn plays Mike Shaw, your friendly mechanic and ,leader of the group of survivors. He was a believable hero.

Yes it is low budget, but I found a lot to like in this film. The effects were excellent and were a few notches above the budget limitations. The zombies were also very effective and were of the dawn of the dead variety.

Speaking of Dawn of the dead, this is an obvious homage as there are some very similar characters and situations. The survivors hold up in a hardware shop and arm themselves with weapons. There is a black hero who looked very much like Ken Foree.

I got involved in the characters and the step father of Alex was without any moral fiber. He beat Alex, beat his wife and then turns out to be a racist. You really wanted bad things to happen to him.

All in all a good effort that had a good story and some comedic touches and delivers on the gory goods.

Beware !!!! do not watch the trailer 1st as this includes all of the best bits and gives away most of the plot.

Don't get me wrong, this is a pretty bad movie, but it does have some redeeming qualities. First, the idea of a knight guarding the entrance to an office building was novel. I don't know if all of the soundtrack was original for this movie, but I really liked a lot of it! I also enjoyed the scene when they cut to a band and went to the renaissance part. Many times, I thought the zombie makeup and effects were unusually good for a B movie as well. Or maybe it's just that this is a more modern B move than I usually see. It's worth seeing once.

After a man by the name of "Karl King" (Stephen W. Eckles) murders his wife and buries her in a field, he makes an even worse mistake by dumping chemical toxins on her grave which produces a type of virus that causes a zombie epidemic to hit a small town in New Mexico. The story then meanders from one character to another who team up to face this epidemic in a quest to survive. So far so good. However, after the first few minutes it got really, really bad. As a matter of fact, at some point it got so bad that it was actually funny. Now, I initially considered the idea that because it was so funny the best way to watch this movie was to invite some good friends over and serve lots of beer. But as the movie progressed I discovered that it became less funny and more awful and then realized that this could result in the loss of good friends--and lots of beer. So I reconsidered. Be that as it may, other than possibly the actress Tracy Melhorn (as "Linneah Savini") I really didn't see any redeemable features in this film. Add in the fact that since her role was so limited I now believe that the best thing a person should do is to skip this film altogether. Failing that, I suppose they could probably try the "good friends with lots of beer" approach. But they shouldn't blame me for what happens afterward because I have tried to warn them.