This was a beautifully shot, well acted movie with a decent premise that just took too damn long to tell. Even at only just over 70 minutes. I loved parts of this and saw moments of brilliance, but wow did it feel long. And I gotta say, there were key moments in the story where I just couldn't believe the characters would act the way they did because it was too far-fetched, so that's not good. Still, I would love to see this edited down and put into an anthology or something.
18 Reviews
The truth is...
queeroid25 June 2021
It's not badly made. It's not badly acted. And the story itself isn't bad either. The problem is that it's just... kind of... lame?
Well, no, let me take that back. Maybe a better way to explain it is as a dramatic horror story that leans much harder into the drama than the horror. So, if you prefer your dramas to have a little bit of eeriness to them, this film is right up your alley. But if your definition of horror is strictly jump-scare after jump-scare, this one definitely is not for you.
Either way, with a run time of just 75 minutes, it's really not all that much to commit to.
Well, no, let me take that back. Maybe a better way to explain it is as a dramatic horror story that leans much harder into the drama than the horror. So, if you prefer your dramas to have a little bit of eeriness to them, this film is right up your alley. But if your definition of horror is strictly jump-scare after jump-scare, this one definitely is not for you.
Either way, with a run time of just 75 minutes, it's really not all that much to commit to.
Nothing new
Lotus-315 October 2020
Warning: Spoilers
Twins + movie = creepy. (Goodnight Mommy, The Shining, etc)
One twin dies = bad news for the remaining one, who will end up switching in some form with the dead one (Everybody has a Plan, etc). And, it's super handy they happen to be identical twins, so no one will notice.
Standard recipe for creepy movie Start with: Many night scenes, Add: the extended silence right before something freaky happens, Mix with: "I don't think we should be doing this", Remove anyone except immediate family, Gently toss in a graveyard, and it can feed the masses.
No extra sprinkles on top in this film, unless you count a migrating headstone.
Standard recipe for creepy movie Start with: Many night scenes, Add: the extended silence right before something freaky happens, Mix with: "I don't think we should be doing this", Remove anyone except immediate family, Gently toss in a graveyard, and it can feed the masses.
No extra sprinkles on top in this film, unless you count a migrating headstone.
To the Producers:
AlexanderAnubis27 June 2021
Warning: Spoilers
Ms. Nyland did a very good job of quietly differentiating Ava and her sister. A three character drama performed by only two actors is an accomplishment. But the overall project suffers from a carelessness that, unfortunately, causes it to fail.
Here are some, but by no means all, examples:
1. We are informed that between the time Ava agrees to assist Jamie in the ritual and its enactment several months pass, yet the questions Ava asks as they are driving to actually do it are so elementary that we must conclude she has been content to remain ignorant of the procedure's details until then.
That Jamie has been deceiving her is irrelevant. For someone who, while regarding her sister's grave, wonders in concrete terms whether the putrefaction of the internal soft organs is forcing the liquefied putrescine and cadavarine out through the corpse's orifices, (what the funeral industry refers to by the sanitized (for your protection) term "purge"), this represents an astounding lack of curiosity.
The inconsistency is compounded by the fact that several times Ava expresses amazed wonderment that Jamie can "really do it." She is not, apparently, a simpleton, so how and when and why did she become convinced that her brother-in-law can do the impossible?
(The nature of the ritual was not surprising, but it did raise the genuinely spooky thought: What blood relative did the person who taught Jamie the technique use to resurrect his own son? (For something with a similar effective eeriness see the dramatizations of "Weird Tailor," in Boris Karloff's Thriller, season 2, episode 4 (1961), and the Amicus horror anthology Asylum (1972), the latter featuring Barry Morse and Peter Cushing.) )
2. Along the same lines: why in the world, (this one or the next), would Ava be ignorant of the basic details of her sister's death? In particular, that she was thrown from the car. Are we to believe that she, and her parents, never saw or asked to see the police, accident or coroner's reports? Or, are we to believe the equally ludicrous assumption that Jamie, for no discernible reason, dragged his dead wife's body back to the car before anyone else arrived and then lied about it.
3. The headstone's appearance was a nice touch and suggestive: Perhaps part of the cost of raising the dead by supplanting the spirit of the living is having to exist with the empty carcass. Perhaps Ava's spirit was consigned to her sister's dead body to balance things out. Regardless, the implication was that the grave itself appeared supernaturally.
Unfortunately, this was entirely nullified when Jamie digs up the grave. Morticians, at least in the US, have long been out of the habit of simply wrapping the naked corpse in a winding sheet and shipping it off un-coffined, and cemetery gravediggers do not usually bury a body only two feet deep. The only way this makes sense is to assume Jamie moved and prepared the body himself as part of the preliminaries to the resurrection procedure.
But this doesn't track with the fact that he expresses disgust at even the thought of the condition of the corpse at least twice, and that the ground in his yard was undisturbed. We are informed that the ritual is taking place on the first anniversary of the accident - even if he had moved the body immediately after its original burial, a year is not enough time for the ground to settle completely.
Also, the winding sheet emerged from the soil as white and bright as from a washing machine supplied with plenty of good old Clorox bleach. It would not have cost the production more than a few minutes time to rub a little dirt into it. This is yet another reason why it is unbelievable that the body had been buried there for any length of time.
So, as noted, there are really only two possibilities:
a) The entire grave was moved supernaturally in which case we must believe the late Mrs. Jamie was interred by professionals in just a sheet only a couple of feet down, or:
b) Jamie moved the body, and the inscrutable powers of darkness were kind enough to help keep things tidy by shipping the stone since it was too heavy for him to lift himself.
At the risk of being accused of pedantry, I have belabored this because this is where the film became absolutely impossible for me to take seriously, largely because the people who made it couldn't be bothered to think these things through.
Finally, (and this is why I was impelled to write any of this at all), I'm one of those insufferable types that stays for the credits and yours contain something I've never before encountered in any book, magazine, newspaper, movie, electronic medium, or anything else, and I'm astonished it got through a supposedly professional production.
In the very last line of the crawl, Unquiet Films, LLC's assertion of ownership spells "copyright" wrong. It's "copyright," I've always assumed, because it's a statement of right to copy and distribute. I don't know what "copywrite" means and I'm fairly certain it doesn't appear in a dictionary of the English language. Did no one bother to even run the text through a spell check program?
I'm a mathematician, not an attorney, but it might be wise to consult yours, (or fire them if they did the incorporation & proofreading because they are probably the kind of lawyer you hope the other guy has), to be certain the error doesn't invalidate any ownership rights or limitations of liability.
The Devil is in the details.
XYZ.
Here are some, but by no means all, examples:
1. We are informed that between the time Ava agrees to assist Jamie in the ritual and its enactment several months pass, yet the questions Ava asks as they are driving to actually do it are so elementary that we must conclude she has been content to remain ignorant of the procedure's details until then.
That Jamie has been deceiving her is irrelevant. For someone who, while regarding her sister's grave, wonders in concrete terms whether the putrefaction of the internal soft organs is forcing the liquefied putrescine and cadavarine out through the corpse's orifices, (what the funeral industry refers to by the sanitized (for your protection) term "purge"), this represents an astounding lack of curiosity.
The inconsistency is compounded by the fact that several times Ava expresses amazed wonderment that Jamie can "really do it." She is not, apparently, a simpleton, so how and when and why did she become convinced that her brother-in-law can do the impossible?
(The nature of the ritual was not surprising, but it did raise the genuinely spooky thought: What blood relative did the person who taught Jamie the technique use to resurrect his own son? (For something with a similar effective eeriness see the dramatizations of "Weird Tailor," in Boris Karloff's Thriller, season 2, episode 4 (1961), and the Amicus horror anthology Asylum (1972), the latter featuring Barry Morse and Peter Cushing.) )
2. Along the same lines: why in the world, (this one or the next), would Ava be ignorant of the basic details of her sister's death? In particular, that she was thrown from the car. Are we to believe that she, and her parents, never saw or asked to see the police, accident or coroner's reports? Or, are we to believe the equally ludicrous assumption that Jamie, for no discernible reason, dragged his dead wife's body back to the car before anyone else arrived and then lied about it.
3. The headstone's appearance was a nice touch and suggestive: Perhaps part of the cost of raising the dead by supplanting the spirit of the living is having to exist with the empty carcass. Perhaps Ava's spirit was consigned to her sister's dead body to balance things out. Regardless, the implication was that the grave itself appeared supernaturally.
Unfortunately, this was entirely nullified when Jamie digs up the grave. Morticians, at least in the US, have long been out of the habit of simply wrapping the naked corpse in a winding sheet and shipping it off un-coffined, and cemetery gravediggers do not usually bury a body only two feet deep. The only way this makes sense is to assume Jamie moved and prepared the body himself as part of the preliminaries to the resurrection procedure.
But this doesn't track with the fact that he expresses disgust at even the thought of the condition of the corpse at least twice, and that the ground in his yard was undisturbed. We are informed that the ritual is taking place on the first anniversary of the accident - even if he had moved the body immediately after its original burial, a year is not enough time for the ground to settle completely.
Also, the winding sheet emerged from the soil as white and bright as from a washing machine supplied with plenty of good old Clorox bleach. It would not have cost the production more than a few minutes time to rub a little dirt into it. This is yet another reason why it is unbelievable that the body had been buried there for any length of time.
So, as noted, there are really only two possibilities:
a) The entire grave was moved supernaturally in which case we must believe the late Mrs. Jamie was interred by professionals in just a sheet only a couple of feet down, or:
b) Jamie moved the body, and the inscrutable powers of darkness were kind enough to help keep things tidy by shipping the stone since it was too heavy for him to lift himself.
At the risk of being accused of pedantry, I have belabored this because this is where the film became absolutely impossible for me to take seriously, largely because the people who made it couldn't be bothered to think these things through.
Finally, (and this is why I was impelled to write any of this at all), I'm one of those insufferable types that stays for the credits and yours contain something I've never before encountered in any book, magazine, newspaper, movie, electronic medium, or anything else, and I'm astonished it got through a supposedly professional production.
In the very last line of the crawl, Unquiet Films, LLC's assertion of ownership spells "copyright" wrong. It's "copyright," I've always assumed, because it's a statement of right to copy and distribute. I don't know what "copywrite" means and I'm fairly certain it doesn't appear in a dictionary of the English language. Did no one bother to even run the text through a spell check program?
I'm a mathematician, not an attorney, but it might be wise to consult yours, (or fire them if they did the incorporation & proofreading because they are probably the kind of lawyer you hope the other guy has), to be certain the error doesn't invalidate any ownership rights or limitations of liability.
The Devil is in the details.
XYZ.
Slow burn & boring
benpilley-5670822 November 2021
I could hardly sit through this all the way. It's 99% dialog between 2 characters over ambient music the whole movie. Doesn't classify as a horror film.
But if you're looking for something on shudder too chuck on so you fall asleep faster I'd recommend this "An unquiet grave"
But if you're looking for something on shudder too chuck on so you fall asleep faster I'd recommend this "An unquiet grave"
Stretched out 5-minute half-baked idea
kay_rock15 July 2021
This was like that one campfire story someone tells, when everyone is pretty sure the teller misremembered most of the details, but they don't want to be rude so they say "um.... ok. Thanks. Who's next?"
I think someone had an idea about twins and tried to write a screenplay about it without ever really noticing that there wasn't much to the idea to begin with. They started throwing in some random obligatory scenes, and then added a lot of fluff in a sad attempt to fill all the empty space, but in the end it was pretty much empty space.
I think someone had an idea about twins and tried to write a screenplay about it without ever really noticing that there wasn't much to the idea to begin with. They started throwing in some random obligatory scenes, and then added a lot of fluff in a sad attempt to fill all the empty space, but in the end it was pretty much empty space.
Painfully dull
colormeunimpressed26 June 2021
This movie was so boring that I actually forgot I was watching it. I cleaned up the kitchen and went out to water the lawn before I finally remembered that I was watching a movie. I came back in to rewind it and discovered that I hadn't actually missed anything because not a single eventful moment happens in the entire film. Seriously. Not one. I wasn't even this bored when I helped my husband sort his tools in the garage.
Lacks the spark
begob9 July 2021
At their beloved's graveside, a grieving husband proposes a pact to his sister-in-law in the hope of restoring life to their dearly departed.
Dialogue-heavy two-hander that mostly feels like an old-fashioned morality tale, along the lines of be-careful-what-you-wish-for, but looking to deliver something more.
The opening scene is two actors expositioning - or maybe they're speaking in riddles that can only be worked out later. By the end, we circle round to a parallel scene, with a hint that this pattern will repeat - so the film-makers are taking a look at some aspect of death, which is intriguing and enough to forgive the drawbacks of low-budget and inexperience in the production.
But the opening is followed by another static scene, where the dialogue raises unspoken questions that might be down to the discrepancy between what appears to be going on and a hidden reality. The suspicion is that it's just a bit cack-handed, given the unexplained jump forward in time.
Eventually, we get to the ritual scene, which is effective and the first time the movie earns its spooky music. The possibilities open up, and the director lays on a couple of moments of weird, when the husband finds himself addressing a void, but I couldn't figure out what they signified. There's also a bleeding knife, which has to symbolize guilt, linking in a later scene to a heart, but I was still struggling to put everything together.
Good horror creates a weird world that actually maps back on to ordinary fears and struggles in a human way. So surely with twins there's a psychoanalytic truth about identity and doubling, some psychic path to a repressed horror? An exploration of what a woman goes through in subjecting herself to a husband, when her liberated self dies?
I'm not insisting on puzzle-solving, but there has to be a consistency and a purpose to those moments where the film-maker shifts out of the ordinary - the trick is to present it as an entertaining narrative, using all the skills of cinema, and to allow the audience to reach its own conclusion. Instead, we get splashes of gruesome symbolism and macabre oddities.
The performances and editing are fine, the cinematography and the lighting not very attractive, and the music for me was too deliberately spooky.
Overall: Digs its way out of the morality tale, only to stumble around the graveyard, bumping into headstones.
Dialogue-heavy two-hander that mostly feels like an old-fashioned morality tale, along the lines of be-careful-what-you-wish-for, but looking to deliver something more.
The opening scene is two actors expositioning - or maybe they're speaking in riddles that can only be worked out later. By the end, we circle round to a parallel scene, with a hint that this pattern will repeat - so the film-makers are taking a look at some aspect of death, which is intriguing and enough to forgive the drawbacks of low-budget and inexperience in the production.
But the opening is followed by another static scene, where the dialogue raises unspoken questions that might be down to the discrepancy between what appears to be going on and a hidden reality. The suspicion is that it's just a bit cack-handed, given the unexplained jump forward in time.
Eventually, we get to the ritual scene, which is effective and the first time the movie earns its spooky music. The possibilities open up, and the director lays on a couple of moments of weird, when the husband finds himself addressing a void, but I couldn't figure out what they signified. There's also a bleeding knife, which has to symbolize guilt, linking in a later scene to a heart, but I was still struggling to put everything together.
Good horror creates a weird world that actually maps back on to ordinary fears and struggles in a human way. So surely with twins there's a psychoanalytic truth about identity and doubling, some psychic path to a repressed horror? An exploration of what a woman goes through in subjecting herself to a husband, when her liberated self dies?
I'm not insisting on puzzle-solving, but there has to be a consistency and a purpose to those moments where the film-maker shifts out of the ordinary - the trick is to present it as an entertaining narrative, using all the skills of cinema, and to allow the audience to reach its own conclusion. Instead, we get splashes of gruesome symbolism and macabre oddities.
The performances and editing are fine, the cinematography and the lighting not very attractive, and the music for me was too deliberately spooky.
Overall: Digs its way out of the morality tale, only to stumble around the graveyard, bumping into headstones.
Not bad
kisscarson-2763316 July 2021
Oh dear lord...
paul_haakonsen25 June 2021
Well an unquiet grave doesn't necessarily make for grand horror entertainment. And such was the case for the 2020 horror movie from writers Christine Nyland and Terence Krey.
Sure, I hadn't even heard about this 2020 movie before now in 2021, when I had the opportunity to sit down and watch it. And with it being labeled as a horror, of course I had an interest in watching it. And I must also admit that the movie's title was sort of alluring as well.
But director Terence Krey managed to present an abysmal display of a movie here with "An Unquiet Grave". And I was honestly not even remotely entertained by the storyline in the movie. In fact, it was an amazingly boring and uneventful movie, which made for a dull movie experience and a prolonged movie experience at that. Woe to you if you manage to sit through the entire ordeal.
And with this being labeled as a horror movie, well... That might be stretching it somewhat. Sure, if you are fresh off of the boat and unfamiliar with the horror genre in general, then sure this movie might be scary or fall into the horror category. But if you, like me have had a decades of exposure to the horror genre, then this movie was a stroll in the park and quite far from being a horror movie.
The acting in the movie was nothing noteworthy, especially since the actors and actresses had wooden and emotionless characters to work with, given the inadequate storyline and some dubious writing.
My rating of "An Unquiet Grave" lands on a two out of ten stars. This movie simply isn't worth the time, money or effort. Some of us suffered through this, so you don't have to.
Sure, I hadn't even heard about this 2020 movie before now in 2021, when I had the opportunity to sit down and watch it. And with it being labeled as a horror, of course I had an interest in watching it. And I must also admit that the movie's title was sort of alluring as well.
But director Terence Krey managed to present an abysmal display of a movie here with "An Unquiet Grave". And I was honestly not even remotely entertained by the storyline in the movie. In fact, it was an amazingly boring and uneventful movie, which made for a dull movie experience and a prolonged movie experience at that. Woe to you if you manage to sit through the entire ordeal.
And with this being labeled as a horror movie, well... That might be stretching it somewhat. Sure, if you are fresh off of the boat and unfamiliar with the horror genre in general, then sure this movie might be scary or fall into the horror category. But if you, like me have had a decades of exposure to the horror genre, then this movie was a stroll in the park and quite far from being a horror movie.
The acting in the movie was nothing noteworthy, especially since the actors and actresses had wooden and emotionless characters to work with, given the inadequate storyline and some dubious writing.
My rating of "An Unquiet Grave" lands on a two out of ten stars. This movie simply isn't worth the time, money or effort. Some of us suffered through this, so you don't have to.
Creepy, sad, thought provoking
Emily-M-199917 August 2021
The style of this film is unique. It has a different pace than many horror films. You can tell it is intentional. It draws the watcher in and enhances the personal experience you have with the characters and content. It plays with the idea of how relationships change over time, and sometimes people we love change in a way that makes them unrecognizable to us.
just ok
mickeyfan-2664213 December 2023
Warning: Spoilers
The main actor was cute and interesting. His chemistry was fairly good with the twin that lived. It got a bit confusing in parts... i assumed the dead wife was back due to the fact he lied to her about how her arm got injured to only see her later a complete mess unearthed from her grave. It might of been me not fully following along b/c the movie had lost my interest. Anyway i feel like this movie had the potential to be better and more fully flushed out than what ended up as the movie. I would be interested in seeing the main actor in more movies and better ones at that. As far as the actress that played the twin she was decent.
Less then meh
justincorylindsey30 September 2023
This is by far one of the most boring movies that I have ever seen. I would rather only watch Schindler's List for the rest of my life than ever have to watch this movie even one more time. Do not waste any of your time watching this movie. It's hard to watch because the way it's shot is so dark that you're missing details because you literally can't see. I only watched this because it said it won a ton of independent film awards so I had hope but it's just not entertaining. There are way too many scenes of people just sitting by themselves and staring out into the distance. Overall, just boring.
This is where I died
nogodnomasters10 February 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Julia Alden-Wells died in a traffic accident. Her twin sister Ava (Christine Nyland) who smells like cigarettes and Julia's husband Jamie (Jacob A. Ware) decide to "bring back" Jules in a ritual performed where she died.
The film had uneasy scenes that reminded a little of "The Monkey's Paw." The production moves at a snail's pace. Nyland gave an excellent performance as two people while the character of Jamie was boring. Make him dress up as Q Shaman or something. Give him a hobby. Anything.
Guide: F-word. Nudity (Christine Nyland). No sex.
The film had uneasy scenes that reminded a little of "The Monkey's Paw." The production moves at a snail's pace. Nyland gave an excellent performance as two people while the character of Jamie was boring. Make him dress up as Q Shaman or something. Give him a hobby. Anything.
Guide: F-word. Nudity (Christine Nyland). No sex.
Eerie and touching
Star_Sei7717 August 2021
Haunting
mattsfo-8666225 January 2022
See also
Awards | FAQ | User Ratings | External Reviews | Metacritic Reviews
