"An Unquiet Grave" an example of quiet minimalism not fully paying off

An Unquiet Grave (2021)

Sometimes, a horror film doesn’t need a hefty budget or a scare-every-ten-minutes ratio to be considered effective. In the micro-budget horror indie “An Unquiet Grave,” writer-director Terrence Krey and co-star/co-writer Christine Nyland rely solely on two dialogue-driven performances and a quietly mounting mood that can be felt, and those elements should be enough. Take 2017’s quietly gripping “A Dark Song,” which also used dark magic to invoke catharsis. Alas, even minimalist filmmaking in its leanest, most hushed, whispery, and languid form can benefit from a little more dread, which this underwhelming two-hander could have used.

After Jamie (Jacob A. Ware) loses his wife Jules in a car accident to a drunk driver, he convinces his edgy twin sister-in-law, Ava (Christine Nyland), to return to where the accident happened. “Can you really do it?” Ava asks at her sister’s tombstone. She knows what she’s in for, and eventually, we will know, too. A year later, Jamie and Ava go on a drive at night to the spot in the woods where Jules’ body was thrown from their car. There, Ava begins to have second thoughts, but Jamie has made up his mind: they are going to bring Jules back. A necromantic ritual is their only help.

Loss can make humans do inscrutable things, but dead is still always better. Humans in movies seem to have a tough time remembering Jud Crandall’s advice, but the difficulties of processing grief are endlessly fascinating. Not only both incarnations of “Pet Sematary” but any monkey-paw tale has explored the consequences of reanimating what should be left to its natural end. Everything that will happen in “An Unquiet Grave” is vague and suggested, trusting the audience to pick up the pieces without any hand-holding. It’s not that the film is trying to be overly cryptic and fool us; the viewer is just picking up in the middle of the characters’ ongoing grief process when they have already had the conversation about “it.” Blindly following these characters should lead somewhere interesting or poignant, and in brief flashes it does, but it never quite gets there.

The tone of “An Unquiet Grave” is appropriately sorrowful, and character beats committed out of cruel selfishness can easily be chalked up to emotional heartache. Even so, it’s difficult to muster up more than base-level interest in the consequences of Jamie’s actions, emotionally driven by grief or not. As Ava, Christine Nyland gives the more compelling performance, and that might also be from her having to play dual roles and finding distinct little nuances. Otherwise, something about the film just doesn’t feel fully realized when 72 minutes still feels too long for this talky drama.

Grade: C

Shudder released “An Unquiet Grave” (72 min.) to stream on June 24, 2021.