Dig Two Graves is a great horror movie. A great indie movie, and a great look at how writing for scary movies should be done.
When it comes to horror movies, you probably know that I defer to Keith and Jon as experts of the genre. I’m a bit squeamish, and a bit more squeamish every year I get older.
I used to really enjoy a good slasher or monster movie, and one of the first films I ever saw without my parents taking me to the theatre was “Freddy’s Dead” in a night of pure grade 7 delight.
But nowadays, it’s harder for me to get terribly excited for a scary movie this side of Cabin in the Woods. I can’t quite stomach them anymore. I will make the occasional trespass into the scary movie section, finding gems like “Kiss of the Damned” or “Europa Report“. I loved Stranger Things, of course. But there was a… heightening, an extreme makeover of the school of horror that, for the most part, left me behind.
Movies like “Hostel” or “Human Centipede” turned my guts to ice and turned me off the modern scary movie. I just can’t sit through them. They’re too gross, too visual, and too willing to alienate me completely, which I understand is part of the filmmaker’s goal. So the general appeal is already pretty low for me, and it’s hard for me to get excited to watch a good scary movie.
Then I saw the trailer for “Dig Two Graves”.
Hot damn is this right up my alley. A little bit “Stranger Things” and a little bit “The Lovely Bones”. Visuals that reminded me of Rian Johnson’s “Brick” (Which is currently ranked #3 on The List). Written by Hunter Adams and Jeremy Phillips, and directed by Adams, “Dig Two Graves” is a tension-building creep-out that pays off forcefully in the end.
A young teenage girl, Jake, watches her brother die cliff diving into a quarry in the summer of 1977. She is unable to quell her sadness and her misplaced feelings of responsibility, despite the best efforts of her grandfather, the small-town sheriff. As the autumn turns cold and races towards winter, three menacing and filthy men offer Jake a darkly magical solution to her problems; a mystical resurrection of her brother. The catch is that such magic comes with a steep price to pay…
Made on a small budget, the film never looks cheap. The cinematography by Eric Maddison is rich, cold, and weary. It emotes. The acting, led by Ted Levine, Samantha Isler, and Troy Ruptash is stark, bold, and layered. There’s a layer of grief, a dusty guilt that everyone is wearing just under their skin that almost bleeds through the camera and made it very hard to hate any of the villains, and almost as hard to love the heroes in this film.
Moody and creepy, you should find a way to watch “Dig Two Graves”.
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Scott does a few things here at 9to5; including but not limited to writing about anything, writing the occasional comic strip, co-hosting The 9to5 Entertainment System, performing art duties on Templars and lots of graphic design work throughout the site. Give him candy.