OPEN GRAVE

US, 2013, 102 minutes, Colour.
Sharlto Copley, Thomas Kretchmann, Josie Ho, Joseph Morgan, Erin Richards, Max Wrottesley.
Directed by Gonzalez Lopez Gallego.

Open Grave is quite an effective horror-thriller. It is in the genre of apocalyptic infection-play dramas.

It begins with a focus on a single man, finding himself awaking in pit of human bodies, and finishing with an aerial shot of the vast pit with so many bodies.

The man has lost his memory, is helped out of the pit by an Asian woman who is mute but wants to help, later revealed to be immune from the infection. He goes to a house where he finds a group who have also lost their memories, even though their identity lie cards on the table. His is not and they are suspicious.

As the plot unfolds, each begins to regain touches of memory, with some visual flashbacks of an eerie nature. Some go out in a car to search finding some cages, some isolation tents, a young boy, and various demented aggressive men and women.

With gradual memories, the initial man begins to remember and wonders who he is, whether he has done damage to the other people are not. That all waiting for the next day, the 18th where some people will gather. As it turns out, the man is actually a doctor who was coming with the others, a squad, to help those infected, and one of those is the aggressive man amongst the group, who it is revealed, is a local inhabitant and infected.

The 18th comes with military rescue, but they attack some of the group fatally. To escape, the doctor injects himself once again and goes into the pit of dead bodies.

Sharlto Copley (District 9) is the doctor, and international star, Thomas Kretschmann, is a locally infected man. The director is Gonzalez Lopez Gallego. After directing in Spain, he made the space-fiction, Apollo 18.

1. A post apocalypse story? Plague, infection, possibilities for cure? Not?

2. The title, the opening, John and his discovering himself in the grave, the bodies? The ending and the vast open grave?

3. Intensity of the story, the narrow focus, the images, the story and opening up, the vast grave – and the future?

4. John getting out, going to the house, finding the group, his lack of memory, identity, their identity cards on the table? The nature of the mystery? The group and suspicions? Characters, Michael and Nathan? Sharon? Lukas? No memories?

5. Lukas and his hostility? Sharon more conciliatory? Michael friendly? Nathan? The significance of the mutant girl, Asian, not having the language, not able to communicate? Yet her helping?

6. The attempted venturing out, the woods, the farm, the zombies and fear? The guns? Suspicions, glimpses of memory, names? The cages, the emergency tents in the medical set-up, the fearful boy?

7. John seeming the villain, not knowing whether he was not, referring to Nate?

8. The return of memories, the effect? Michael, venturing out, his death?

9. The identities, Lukas as a local farmer, being infected, his headaches, the worst infection? Sharon, Michael and Nate, part of the team? Nate and his
death?

10. The expect day, the arrival of the troops, firing on people, deaths?

11. John, finding the goods, the injections, the stock? The truth about the mission to help people? The infection?

12. John, saved, injecting himself, losing his memory, finding himself once again in the open grave?