The Gravedancers (R-2006)

So, let's get this straight: dancing on people's grave is NOT a good thing??? "The Gravedancers" takes that fairly obvious piece of advice and builds a movie on the consequences of grave desecration. Four friends stop by the grave of their recently deceased friend and find an envelope with a poem telling them the proper way to mourn is to "rejoice" and, of course, dance. Having had a few drinks, they decide to do just that, dancing around the graveyard. It does not take long for them to start hearing things go bump in the night and be visited by ghosts. When they bring in a "ghost-hunting" duo (well, who ya gonna call??), they find that they were dancing on the graves in the "undesirable" section of the graveyard. Apparently, this graveyard is set up like the preppie frat house in "Animal House". The graves they were dancing on turn out to be those of some very notorious murderers...and they're pissed. That's the basic plotline of what ends up as an OK ghost story. It starts out more promising than it ends up. It starts to lose some steam with the introduction of the ghost-hunters. This duo must be smart, right? I mean, he has a heavy European accent and she wears glasses and a turtleneck. Her outfit officially turns this into a glorified "Scooby-Doo" movie as she greatly resembles Daphne. For half of this film, you get a creepy ghost story which uses suspense, not effects, to scare. As you move into the second half, the effects get dialed up and the writing takes a pass. One climactic sequence is so over the top, the effects resemble the Mummy films. The effects are fine in the Mummy films, but noticeably out of place here. Overall, an OK effort that could have been very good.

Grade: C-

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