Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on April 27, 2006, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
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Those who come to The Gravedancers expecting the off-the-wall, black-humored insanity of director Mike Mendez’s previous The Convent should be advised: This is a much more straightforward supernatural tale. Which is not to say that Mendez has mellowed, just that here he’s tackling material (a script by Brad Keene and Chris Skinner) which largely takes its horrors seriously. And the energy of his filmmaking hasn’t waned; back when he first announced the project, Mendez compared it to an adult version of the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland, and once it gets cooking, The Gravedancers does indeed play like a cinematic amusement-park spook ride. Without self-consciously homaging the films of decades ago, it harks back to the days when horror movies had fun scaring you, yet didn’t wink at the camera or employ self-conscious humor to do so.
Appropriately enough, the story begins with a funeral, and the central characters are a trio of the deceased’s old friends: Harris (Dominic Purcell, bringing more intensity to this common-man role than he did to Dracula in Blade: Trinity), Kira (Josie Maran) and Sid (Marcus Thomas). An evening spent getting tanked leads the three back to the cemetery, where they discover a card bearing a strange incantation which, of course, they read aloud. Harris and Kira also indulge in the titular activity, while Sid relieves himself on one of the tombstones. Needless to say, they’ve picked the wrong graves to disrespect, and the spirits of those buried there start making their displeasure known.
In a switch on the usual haunted-house story, these ghosts start pulling their traditional tricks in the homes of their targets. Strange noises, mysterious phone calls and moving objects plague the home of Harris and his wife Allison (Clare Kramer), and she gets understandably upset—in part because some of these suggest that Kira might be attempting to worm her way back into old flame Harris’ life. (Once it becomes clear that the goings-on are supernatural, the movie doesn’t really address Allison’s potentially dramatic reaction to learning that her husband has brought vicious spirits home.) Reteaming with Kira and Sid, who have also been on the receiving end of the entities’ mischief, Harris tries to put an end to the harassment before it becomes deadly.
Mendez and his writers do a nice job of interweaving the characters’ personal issues with the paranormal kind, as old attractions and tensions bubble up among the trio before the overwhelming concern becomes saving their own lives. They receive assistance from Vincent (Tcheky Karyo), the de rigueur occult expert who helps uncover the identities of their spectral tormenters—who prove to be very nasty customers indeed. (Megahn Perry, the adorable Goth girl from The Convent, is equally fetching here as Vincent’s tart-tongued assistant.) After building up atmosphere in the first half, with stark, gritty photography by the Saw films’ David A. Armstrong, Mendez gets down to scary business when the protagonists return once more to that graveyard, where the coffins start demonstrating minds of their own.
If the basic narrative of The Gravedancers is familiar, right down to the characters’ lengthy last stand in a big besieged house, Mendez and co. also prove that it can still work when staged with gusto. The last act ratchets up the tension as the evil ghosts really make their presences known and visible, complete with freaky makeup FX by the Spectral Motion team. There are moments when the action and images tip over into silliness, but you have to hand it to Mendez: the very last major effect is completely gonzo and yet done with such poker-faced conviction that the scene remains exciting instead of becoming laughable. (There’s a pun in that last sentence that I’ll leave viewers to figure out after they’ve seen the movie.) In a time when many horror films are homaging the ’70s by amping up the brutality, here’s one that isn’t as gruesome but nonetheless recalls the unpretentious appeal of solidly and confidently put-together drive-in fare.
