Grave Halloween

Just when you thought you'd seen every horror movie that takes place on the hallowed Halloween holiday, along comes the SyFy channel's "Grave Halloween." Its title may invoke intrigue, but the long-forgotten J-horror genre tries to live on in a Japanese setting of Mount Fuji.

"Grave Halloween" was part of SyFy's 31 days of Halloween series in 2013, and should have just stayed in the minds of those who originally took the time to see it as it aired. This is no "Sharknado" -- "Grave Halloween" has absolutely no sense of humor, and takes itself all too seriously.

American exchange student Maiko (Kaitlyn Leebs) ropes a spattering of classmates into joining her on an expedition to The Suicide Forest, a vast, wooded area notorious for being the place where people kill themselves. Maiko wants to document the reasoning behind why her birth mother killed herself in these dreaded woods.

Along for the ride, of course, are deplorable characters the audience won't care about, the loyal best friend, and an array of CGI ghosts that pop in and out of the frame at any given moment. And it also inexplicably happens to be Halloween, an afterthought on the part of the writers who could've at least juiced up this fact.

As lead actress playing Maiko, Kaitlyn Leebs looks bored and seems to be in on the joke that this SyFy movie's a dud. With no special features on the DVD and a tepid movie presentation, "Grave Halloween" should be overlooked.

"Grave Halloween"
DVD
$19.99
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