In a number of ways, An Unquiet Grave is a great little horror movie (although it's very mild, mainly playing out as an intimate drama with a couple of good shocks thrown into the third act). It does well with limited resources, and explores grief and what lengths people are willing to go to in order to have some more time with loved ones.
Jamie (Jacob A. Ware) has a plan to bring back his dead spouse, Julia, and he enlists the help of her twin sister, Ava (Christine Nyland, who also co-wrote the script with director Terence Krey). Although the plan seems ill-advised, Ava wants to give it a try. But Jamie hasn't told her everything, and he intends to do something that could put them all in serious jeopardy.
With only three characters involved in the plot, and only two cast members portraying them, An Unquiet Grave has to be good enough in the script department, and pacing, to hold your interest until it ends. Thankfully, it is. Nyland and Krey's script is intriguing, but it is also scattered with a lot of little lines of dialogue and moments that will ring true to anyone who has experienced a dangerous black hole of grief that could easily swallow up so much of their personality and feelings. It also does a great job, certainly in the first two thirds of the film, of lacing most scenes with an unnerving hint of things about to become dark and horrifying.
Krey, making his feature debut, keeps things simple with his direction, and it's just a shame that he goes for an approach of near-full restraint (one impressively haunting image aside). He allows the characters to convey everything outwith the frame, whether it's their history or their fear of things that viewers don't get a full look at, and this approach certainly helps to keep things comfortably within the limitations that he is working with.
Ware and Nyland are both very good in their roles, with the latter perfectly nailing his performance between desperate widow and slightly creepy guy playing with fire. Nyland has to show a wider range, but she also gets every moment just spot on.
My only major gripe is the ending. Despite the film never really moving into a higher gear, so to speak, it moves along nicely enough, and starts to put everything together in a way that draws viewers in, and has them starting to consider more and more implications. Then it feels as if it just gives up, deciding that it's time to wrap everything up. This leaves the last 5-10 minutes completely flat and unsatisfying, and the absolutely last scene of the film is a huge disappointment. I didn't think it was quite enough to undo all of the good work done in the previous hour or so (and the runtime is a nice, tight, 72 minutes), but I can easily see other people disagreeing with me on that point.
Worth the short portion of your day that it will take up, but worth approaching as a horror-tinged drama, with expectations kept in check, rather than something that will deliver bloodshed and jump scares.
6/10
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