Gravedancers

Highly recommended movie :)

Directed by Mike Mendez
Produced by
Jonathan Dana
Brent Emery
Mark Morgan
Jonas Hudson
Written by Brad Keene
Chris Skinner
Starring
Dominic Purcell
Clare Kramer
Music by Joseph Bishara
Cinematography David A. Armstrong
Editing by Mike Mendez
Distributed by Code Entertainment
Release date(s) 2005
Running time 99 minutes
Country United States
Language English



CAST

Dominic Purcell as Harris Mckay
Clare Kramer as Allison Mitchell
Josie Maran as Kira Hayden
Marcus Thomas as Sid Vance
Tcheky Karyo as Vincent Cochet
Megahn Perry as Frances Culpepper




SYNOPSIS

An unidentified young woman, alone in a room, is attacked by an invisible assailant, who hangs her in the stairway of her house. As she dies, she drops an ornate black envelope.

A year later, former college friends Sid (Marcus Thomas), Kira (Josie Maran), and Harris (Dominic Purcell) go out drinking after a funeral. They break into the Crescent View Cemetery to say their final goodbyes to the departed. Continuing their revelries, they get quite drunk. Sid finds a black envelope tucked behind a garland of flowers at the grave. It contains a poem urging those present to be joyful and to dance upon the graves. In their drunken state, the three regard this as a celebration of life, and they dance.

Soon enough, mysterious things begin to happen. Harris and his wife Allison (Clare Kramer) are frightened by unexpected visions and odd sounds. Then Kira is attacked by a demonic force. She is severely bitten and sexually assaulted, and her house is ransacked. Sid is plagued by unexpected fires. They enlist a pair of paranormal investigators, Vincent Cochet (Tchéky Karyo) and Frances Culpepper (Megahn Perry), who determine that the three inadvertently invoked a powerful curse by dancing on the graves. They are now being haunted by three wayward spirits - a passionate axe murderer, a child pyromaniac, and a serial killer and rapist - who will kill them at the next full moon.

As the full moon approaches, they return to the cemetery to disinter the remains of their tormenters, hoping to bury them anew and put the curse to rest. Not all of the critical parts make it back into the ground, however, and on the final night the three experience renewed attacks, more powerful and furious than any to date. They are trapped together, with the investigators, by the malevolent spirits, who move in to take their revenge. Sid is incinerated by his firebug ghost; Kira is murdered and her body is possessed by the axe murderer who is pursuing Harris.

Under duress, Frances admits that she foiled the burial plan by hiding the skulls of the corpses, the better to gather hard evidence of ghostly activity. Harris takes the skull for his ghost, hoping to place it in a grave which Vincent has conveniently left open in the yard as a safety measure and break the curse at the last moment. He helps Allison escape the house through an attic window, and she crashes back in, through the outside fence and walls, in Vincent's Humvee, which was also parked in the yard.

The spiritual force in the house coalesces and takes the form of a demonic head, which chases after the fleeing Humvee, shattering interior walls as it comes. After a near brush with defeat, the final skull is at last put in its resting place, and the energy of the raging ghosts disappears.

Finally, Allison and Harris walk through the cemetery after the funerals of their friends. As they leave, the groundskeeper carefully places a black envelope in a familiar style on one of the tombstones.

Again sinopsys


Tragic, brooding, and morbid, THE GRAVE DANCERS starts with a bizarre murder. Then it's a year or so later for no discernable reason and there's a funeral - not for the murdered person. Then there's the reception. A friend died and his remaining three high school friends have come together to mourn him.

Okay, mourning's over, I've got to get up early tomorrow for work. The friend with the hard-nosed attitude and the ill-fitting suit (this guy is a lawyer?) is Harris McKay (Dominic Purcell: EQUILIBRIUM, BLADE: TRINITY). His friends, in particular his former friend, Sid Vance (Markus Thomas: EDMOND) rightly calls him to task and walks off in disgust. Harris and the third pal, Kira Hastings (Josie Maran: VAN HELSING), know where to find Sid, right where he said he'd be; at the cemetery conducting their dead pal's funeral, the right way! They way friends should: With loads of drunken debauchery. Debauchery being the word since their stupor leads to Kira and Harris rekindling old feelings they once had for each other: made all the more sticky by the fact that Harris' wife, Allison (Clare Kramer: BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER [TV], MUMMY AN' THE ARMADILLO, THE THIRST), is waiting for him at home, having trusted him with his friends.

Nearly dozing off by his dead bud's tombstone, Sid finds a grievance card among the flowers and reads it. It sounds like a poem celebrating life and encourages everyone to "dance among the tombstones." In their inebriated state, that sounds like a great idea and they spend the rest of the time dancing until Harris passes out.

2 weeks later and things are taking a dark turn in the Harris household. Doors open and close. The plumbing makes strange noises. The cat is afraid of certain rooms. The piano plays by itself even though its not one of those kind of pianos. Dogs and cats aren't living together yet, but its getting there.

And it gets weirder, and spookier, and freakier, until it climaxes in Harris and Allison's room one night in one hell of a wicked scare. Freaked to no end and looking for a reasonable explanation, Allison hooks on Kira, wondering just what her husband did that night, a few weeks ago, when he didn't return from the funeral until the next day. Harris tries to explain that whatever is going on can't possibly be Kira's fault, but it seems that soon after Allison and Harris were married, the heartbroken Kira stalked them for a while. Allison wants to confront Kira.

So they go to her house only to find that things are going from very bad to way the hell worse. Whatever has been happening to them is nothing compared to what Kira's been going through. They take Kira to the hospital while the police try to figure it all out. That's when Harris gets a call on his cell phone. Sid is on the other line and would like them to come over. Yes, he knows it's late, but could they come over anyway? There is some ... uh ... freaky shit going on at Sid's house.

When Harris and Allison arrive they find Sid's house filled with cameras, recording devices, computers, monitors and two professor's from the University: Parapsychology professors. And they aren't happy with Sid, either. Seems they advertised in the newspaper, a la JREF Challenge, offering money to anyone who could prove the existence of ghosts. Ghost hunters Vincent (Tchéky Karyo: THE CORE) and Culpepper (Meghan Perry: CONVENT) haven't found ghosts at Sid's place; think they're being conned, and they don't like Sid. Soon, in front of everyone, they find just what they are looking for, though that doesn't make them like Sid any more.

What Director Mike Mendez brings to THE GRAVE DANCERS is perfectly timed moments of humor and horror - and I don't say that lightly. The audience was, at turns, jumping in their seats and shrieking, right at the moment they were laughing. Mike Mendez knows where the stupid worn out Horror movie clichés are and he does away with them utterly. You won't have to worry about Allison's cat jumping out at any time for a cheap prank scare. THE GRAVE DANCERS is all about real scares. If you go to Horror movies to unplug your feelings and brain to watch fake blood and gore only, you won't like THE GRAVE DANCERS - it will ENGAGE you - it's that genuinely scary. And Mike keeps building the scares as THE GRAVE DANCERS, which started off so small and indie looking, gets wilder and crazier with each passing minute, culminating in a balls to the wall all out freakfest of an ending. With a tight script by Brad Keene and Chris Skinner, THE GRAVE DANCERS is the scary Horror movie we want to watch in wide release, while incompetent suits at the distributors want to teat-feed us another two-bit imitation of SAW or HOSTEL.*

THE GRAVE DANCERS freakin' rocks and gets all 5 ShriekGirls.

Sinopsis


Ada yang bilang kuburan adalah tempat yang keramat. Banyak kejadian aneh yang sering terjadi di tempat peristirahatan terakhir ini. Sayangnya tak semua orang percaya dan sebagian malah menganggap ini hanya mitos yang tak berdasar. Celakanya, sebagian dari mereka yang tak percaya ini malah jadi korban dari ulang mereka sendiri.

Awalnya, Sid (Marcus Thomas), Kira (Josie Maran), dan Harris (Dominic Purcell) hanya ingin mengucapkan selamat tinggal pada sahabat mereka yang meninggal akibat kecelakaan. Setelah pemakaman usai, ketiga sahabat ini memutuskan untuk mengenang sahabat mereka sambil minum-minum di bar. Malam mulai larut namun ketiga sahabat ini merasa mereka masih harus mengucap selamat tinggal pada sahabat mereka yang telah pergi.

Mereka pun berangkat ke pemakaman. Secara tak sengaja, Sid menemukan sebuah amplop berisi puisi yang kemudian dibaca oleh Sid. Setelah itu mereka menari di atas tiga buah makam yang ada di dekat sana. Celakanya, ternyata puisi yang dibaca Sid adalah mantera kuno yang bisa membangkitkan tiga mayat yang ada di sana. Tak lama kemudian tiga sahabat ini mulai dihantui sosok aneh dan mereka tak punya banyak waktu karena bulan purnama nanti nyawa mereka akan jadi taruhan.