User Reviews

"Grave Halloween" is sort of a very odd mixture between Japanese and Western horror. And the end result is entertaining enough, although not particular scary.

The story is about a group of Americans in Japan, who venture into a forest that is known for the high number of suicides that have been taking place there. Maiko (played by Kaitlyn Leeb) is there to return her dead mother's belongings and to perform a ceremony to grant the spirit of her dead mother final rest. The forest seems to be unending and plays tricks on those who venture inside.

As entertaining as "Grave Halloween" was, then the movie never really got off more than a mediocre launch. The hybrid between traditional Japanese ghost movies and Western horror didn't really pan out as nicely as it could have been. And as much as I enjoy zombie movies, then the spirits haunting the forest should have been ghost entities, but they were more zombie than ghosts. And this ultimately took something away from the story.

The acting in the movie was alright, given the story and the script that the actors and actresses had to work with. Kaitlyn Leeb really carried the movie quite nicely.

"Grave Halloween" is actually one of the more nice SyFy horror movies, but it was just lacking something crucial to make it outstanding.

If you enjoy the SyFy original movie line and are somewhat familiar with the Asian ghost cinema, then "Grave Halloween" could be entertaining for you. It was well worth a single watch, although the movie hardly has enough material to sustain more than a single viewing.

"Grave Halloween" scores a mediocre 5 out of 10 stars.

In Japan, the college student Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb) grieves the loss of her mother, who committed suicide two weeks ago in the notorious "suicide forest". Maiko is seeking out her body and her friends Amber (Cassi Thomson) and Terry (Dejan Loyola) decide to make a documentary about her quest as school project. Terry invites his friend Kyle (Graham Wardle) to shoot their documentary and they head to the forest. On the arrival, they meet the lonely hiker Jin (Hiro Kanagawa), who asks them to leave the dead in peace and go away and stays with them. However they decide to search the spot and soon their college mates Skylar (Tom Stevens), Brody (Jesse Wheeler) and Craig (Jeffrey Ballard) play a prank on them. While returning to their car, the trio finds a dead body and Skyler steals a Rolex from his wrist. When Jin finds what they have done, he advises that they are doomed.

"Grave Halloween" is a horror movie with careful production, gloomy cinematography and good acting. Aokigahara, also known as the Suicide Forest or Sea of Trees does exist in Japan and "lies at the northwest base of Mount Fuji and has a historic association with demons in Japanese mythology and it is a notoriously common suicide site" (see Wikipedia - "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aokigahara"). This place might be known by Japanese but is totally unknown for Westerns. Unfortunately the lead story explaining why the Japanese mother of the Western Maiko committed suicide does not work well. The explanation of her suicide is totally unreasonable. Further, if the characters were Japanese, the plot could work better; but the Japanese college shows only American students living a Japanese legend and gives the sensation of a phony plot. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): Not available on Blu-Ray or DVD.

At Yamanashi International University in Japan, Maiko is struggling with her mother's suicide two months earlier in the 'suicide forest'. Amber leads a class project with Kyle and Terry to look for her body. Ghostly apparitions start appearing in the background. They see two policemen carry out a body. Cameras are not allowed. Lone hiker Jin warns them and offers to guide them to the supposed site. Three classmates play a prank on them.

It's strange to shot in BC with a bunch of white young adults and call it Japan. Kaitlyn Leeb is at most half-Asian. I'm sure they could have picked one Asian as part of the group. Some of them are definitely cannon fodder anyways. It's great to have a solid actor like Hiro Kanagawa but it's not enough. The ghosts don't count. There are way too many idiotic dudes acting idiotically. This is a no-budget horror that starts with minor creepiness and then turns into overblown horror shlock.

For the SyFy Channel, who have produced countless bad movies with the odd tolerable one, Grave Halloween is not so bad at all. It is filmed and edited competently and the setting is quite creepy. The music does have the appropriate amount of eeriness, the death scenes are gory and really very chilling and the acting especially from Cassie Thomson and Hiro Kanagawa is above-average. Extra plaudits also for the details of Japan and the Japanese laws and customs being spot on, and for the homages paid to The Evil Dead, The Ring and The Blair Witch Project without blatantly ripping them off. Grave Halloween is not without its flaws though. The characters are not very well-defined at all and at the end of the day there's not really anybody despite the acting that you find yourself caring for. The dialogue lacks flow and can sound downright embarrassing at times("that's super comforting" is something you'd hear a stereotypical high school student say). And with the story, there is a good idea somewhere that is not translated quite so well on screen, the back-story and the Japanese culture are intriguing but the mystery and horror elements- which are more important- are not. The mystery elements are not paced very securely and feels too predictable and lacking in suspense and tension to really convince, and the horror suffers also from predictability and not everybody looking as though they properly care for their predicament. Grave Halloween wisely uses its special effects minimally, but when they are there at best they are just okay and too many times also rather shoddy. The ghosts evoke some chills, but did anybody else think that they looked a little more like zombies rather than ghosts? All in all for the SyFy Channel, Grave Halloween is not bad but as a movie taking that it's SyFy out of the equation for a minute it is one that is alright but left wanting. 5/10 Bethany Cox

Some half-Japanese girl named Maiko (pronounced "Michael" in the movie) wants to find the place where her mother committed suicide to give her a proper burial. She has nightmares and visions of a forest, of her childhood. Along for the ride come some friends of hers, foreign exchange students in Japan, who are going to...film the whole thing for a class project. Off they go then to the suicide forest, a forest in Japan where lots of people commit suicides by hanging themselves from trees. All they have to go by is a picture she has of the tree where her mother killed herself. I guess Maiko thinks it shouldn't be too hard to find a single tree in a forest. Who took the picture of the tree we don't know. She also has a box with two pieces of jewelry that belonged to the mother. She needs those for whatever ceremony she's going to perform that night, which happens to be Halloween night.

When they arrive, they find a sign that bans cameras, still they film. They hide from police (why police?) that removes the corpses. And then they meet the strange stranger who knows about the forest, who makes sinister pronouncements, who warns them not to do this or that, and who recognizes (!) the tree and will guide them to it. But quickly they run into some classmates who pull a prank on them. The pranksters then go their way and run into trouble. They steal a watch from a deceased man in a tent (?). But then the guy who takes the watch is attacked. The other guys run back to the other group. At this point it's night.

Maiko starts seeing things, we get to see some flashbacks from her youth about her mother, her violent father, and her sister. The stranger disappears. Maiko and the cameraguy end up arrested and handcuffed in the police station's morgue (?). Then something kills the cop, they escape, they find the tree, and more ghosts. Some of the other kids end up in trouble and injured. Then the sun comes up.

Grave Halloween has a good concept. It has a gorgeous setting. The Canadian forest they used is truly beautiful. The scenes filmed during the girl's childhood also look stunning. Overall, direction is very good. But that's all this movie has going for it. While making a movie about a real-life suicide forest sounds like a good idea, you've got to have a good script to work out the idea. And here's it just doesn't work out. It's not easy making a movie about a ghost story and this one sure doesn't succeed. Things get messy and unclear. The ending comes out of nowhere. Nothing is answered. The childhood scenes don't clarify things either but create more questions. And finally a fatal flaw is the weak lead actress.

The idea was quite good. It's about American college students in Japan traveling to the notorious "suicide forest" to make a documentary for a film class, only to be haunted and stalked the the spirits of the people who died there after a couple of friends desecrate a death site. And the forest chosen as the backdrop is haunting and beautifully photographed. But nothing else is done right. It's followed by a bunch of gory killings which occur with little logic or reason. Many victims are people who have done nothing to wrong the dead. In the end, it's just another excuse to watch young people get slaughtered in gruesome ways. I felt cheated.

Grave Halloween (2013)

* 1/2 (out of 4)

A young woman (Kaitlyn Leeb) agrees to be a part of a documentary covering a mysterious forest in Japan known as "Suicide Forest." This place is known for countless suicides that have happened there including the girl's mother but while the group tries to determine the cause, they soon realize that angry spirits are there. GRAVE HALLOWEEN, on a technical level, is actually rather impressive and supports some rather gory death scenes and some fine performances but there's still no doubt that it's just a weak imitation of some much better movies. This pretty much plays like a cross between THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, THE RING and just about any other Japanese ghost movie. The biggest problem is that the thing just isn't scary and all the "jump" scenes just don't add up to anything. There are countless times in the film where the documentary makers spot something on their camera and these scenes are meant to make us jump. Well, they never do and instead of being scary they just seem rather forced and eventually boring. As the film moves along we get to some rather bloody death scenes and these are especially gory when you consider this was made for television. Another thing working against the picture is that once the mystery starts to play out you realize that you simply don't care about anything going on or anyone involved. As I said, the performances are better than average with Cassi Thomson really standing out among the cast. Hiro Kanagawa is also very good in his role as a man who leads the group through the woods. Director Steven R. Monroe (I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE) knows how to shoot a film and make it look profession, there's no question about that but hopefully his talents will be used for a better picture.

GRAVE HALLOWEEN has an EXCELLENT setting: the real life Aokigahara Forest in Japan, also known as the Sea of Trees or the Suicide Forest. It's a place at the foot of Mount Fuji where people commonly go to kill themselves, a bit like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. A shame, then, that this low budget ghost flick was filmed in a Canadian wood instead; despite the attempts at authenticity this is a film that feels fake throughout (a Japanese university entirely inhabited by westerners doesn't help).

In any case, the story turns out to be a disappointment as well. A teenage girl and her buddies travel into the forest to discover the site of her mother's suicide, only to find themselves picked off messily one by one by a vengeful spirit. Yes, it's the usual long-haired Japanese ghost nonsense again, except it lacks any kind of thrills whatsoever in this Canadian TV movie. You have the SyFy Channel to thank for that.

The script is derivative, the dialogue a disappointment. The mangled childhood tragedy, revealed through poorly-edited flashbacks, is a non-starter, and there isn't a single member of the cast to get interested in either. The mildly Asian-looking American actress in the lead role, Kaitlyn Leeb, is best known for playing the three-breasted woman in the TOTAL RECALL remake, so that gives you some idea of her acting ability...

This forest is actually a real place. Logan Paul the YouTube personality got in hot water a few years back when he and his gang filmed suicide aftermath and were a little less than respectful to the body though really you see it was nerves. The movie is quite scary in a Japanese Western fusion way. The actors are decent even if the dialogue is a bit corny in spots. Otherwise, a solid horror. The lead actress is very attractive too which doesn't hurt.

You would think that with all of the commercials that were advertising the upcoming viewing of this show that it would have been much better that what it was.

From the beginning to the end was nothing but a slow and boring journey of a bunch of friends filming in the forest trying to capture ghosts. The main character talks of her dead mother, who is portrayed in flashbacks as being Japanese and of her childhood with her mother. However, as a child, she is portrayed as a Japanese child but the main character looks more Hispanic than Japanese! There is nothing remotely scary about this film and it was definitely over-hyped. Don't bother unless you just absolutely have nothing else to do.

Although most of the reviewer complaints about this movie are legitimate and it reminds you a little of The Forest, I found this movie strangely engrossing and terrifying. You really come to care about Maiko and her mission. The movie also doesn't go on for long before giving some decent scares, creepy ambiance, and a mystery (more than can be said for recent critically acclaimed horror flicks). And the back story (not fully revealed until the end) is believable to me. I wish a Japanese reviewer would weigh in on whether she/he thinks the back story is believable. I will say the ending was disappointing to me, but definitely creepy.

Grave Halloween (2013) is a movie I recently watched on Tubi. The storyline follows an expedition and research project in a forest known for suicides, over 100 suicides per year to be exact. One of the researcher's mothers committed suicide in the forest and while she looks for answers, the answer may put the rest of the research group's lives at risk. This movie is directed by Steven R. Monroe (I Spit on Your Grave 1 & 2) and stars Kaitlyn Leeb (Locked Down), Cassi Thomson (Left Behind), Graham Wardle (In the Land of Women) and Dejan Loyola (iZombie). The storyline for this is a bit unrealistic with the numbers they share and how the issue hasn't become a national/international concern. The acting in this is very mediocre and nothing special. The horror elements are very blah but the kill scenes are actually entertaining and pretty good. I really liked both the makeup and special effects. This is one of those movies if you can ignore the storyline and acting you can enjoy some worthwhile kill scenes. I'd score this movie a 3.5-4/10 and only recommend watching it with the appropriate expectations.

Maiko (Kaitlyn Leeb, Isabelle Beech as a child) is an American studying in Japan. She has disturbing dreams about a woman searching for her daughter, calling out for her. This may be because she's beginning a quest to find her birth mother (Maiko Miyauchi).

Joining her in her search is a student video team that will document her journey – producer Amber (Cassie Thomson), cameraman Kyle (Graham Wardle), and sound man Terry (Dejan Loyola).

The group is given a warning about the Yure ("YOU-ray," the restless souls of the suicide victims ) by a wanderer named Jin (Hiro Kanagawa), who knows the forest well and agrees to help them find where Maiko's mother committed suicide.

Takeaway lesson: Do not ... Repeat, DO NOT ... enter the Suicide Forest under any circumstances.

This is a SyFy Channel movie that has all the scary elements of a Japanese "obake" (ghost) story. The acting and story are okay, and actually, compared to other SyFy movies I've seen, Grave Halloween is not bad. But, the problem with SyFy movies is that they are so predictable. That's this one's problem, and this time, there's no familiar veteran actor/actress to "legitimize" the movie.

The movie has only a slight relevance to Halloween, but SyFy Channel exploited that to make the movie part of their "31 Days of Halloween" observance. Pretty tacky, huh?

Hey, wanna watch a bunch of despicable people get what's coming to them? If so, then you might like this.

A student film crew goes to a haunted forest in Japan's infamous suicide forest, bringing along a girl whose mother apparently took her life there. She wants to perform a ceremony that will give her peace. At first, I thought she was going to be someone to root for, but I was wrong. She's just as bad as any of them, and unfortunately was the worst actor in the group, in my opinion. I didn't find her believable in any of this.

The only likeable character in this was the harbinger who was trying to help them. Our merry band of idiots don't take him the least bit seriously even when he simply asks them to be careful, pay attention to where they're walking, and to respect the dead. And as a rule for movies like this, they do the opposite of what he asks them to do and then can't understand why bad things are happening to them. It's so unfair!

The movie isn't completely without merit. The kill scenes are good, the cinematography was better than average, the story overall was okay (although it's a little vague), the production overall was good, and even though I found it painful to watch most of the cast play their characters, some of them did a pretty decent job with what they were given.

It's a TV movie that was probably cranked out pretty quickly. It's pretty well done considering that, but it's not good.

If this had even just slightly better actors and more likeable characters, I think it would have been a pretty decent movie. Unfortunately, the single word that comes to my mind when trying to describe this movie is "dumb." Smart premise, dumb movie. It's not the worst I've seen and the things that really bothered me about this movie (the characters and acting for the most part), may not bother other people as much. I've seen much, much worse, but I would only watch this if you're bored.

What a waste of an hour and a half! Good concept.... BAD MOVIE!!! Should have gone a different way. Unnecessary deaths and unexplained results. Also had a few mistakes in it. Ending was STUPID!!! Plus, watch the cop start an already running car lol.

Good SYFY movie for a change. Movie wasn't bad, storyline similar to "The Forest". Only thing that annoyed me was none of the non-native speaking actors couldn't pronounce the Japanese wordscorrectly. Should have at least had the Japanese actors teach them the basic pronunciation.

Take the word "Grave" and the word "Halloween", two words greatly associated with horror movie titles, put them together as one, and hey presto! You have a horror movie title. I'm sure the thought process went something like that.

Well, it is described as a horror movie. An exploitation of women as most of these cheap horror movies are. Select a beautiful, sensually appealing woman, stick her in a horror movie, and make her seem she has the intelligence of the wood decking in your backyard. Of course, at the start, scantily dressed, (at least it wasn't a naked shower scene).

As a movie, not bad, not great, but you know what you're getting into with these low-budget, cheesy horror films. Of course, it follows the age-old premise of a few one-dimensional teens who wake up to scream now and then, but it's more the heightened music score which grabs your attention, for usually very little happening.

Our gruesome fewsome head off to a known freaky remote place, and this one is boldly referred to as 'Suicide Forest'. Where the token creepy old guy gives them solid advice to avoid. Oh and, 'respect the dead'. Did they listen? Well, there wouldn't be a movie if they did. They are making a documentary. There's always video cameras somewhere, huh?

Our main heroine hopes in the process to make sense of her mother's suicide, some years earlier.

Slow-paced, boring in parts, tired format, but mildly entertaining nonetheless. There won't be any jump out your seat moments. It's as predictable as your timeline on Facebook. Usual suspects, with the same old nonsense, and you're hoping for something different to happen. Nah! You're not seeing anything new here.

The deaths start coming of course. One or two are appealing and impaling. Jason Voorhees would have been proud. This is the main reason why it's 4/10 worthy.

The acting is fair to hellish. The Director, Steven R. Monroe, knows what he's doing. The writers, possibly, not so much. There are elements you don't quite follow, like the two ineffectual cops running round the forest and reminding the teens, they have been warned. Then locking a couple of them up in a back room together, instead of separately in cells. Certainly doesn't look representative of a jail house. Especially as there's a number of dead bodies in the same room too. I missed something here, not sure what the cops were about. They are helpful in letting our trapped teens escape, cos you know they wrap dead bodies still holding a switchblade. Look out for creepy old guy getting more creepier.

Mind you, if you were to get a bit too deep on it, and you work out the movie is all about going after one member of the group, you realise the previous ninety minutes didn't make much sense.

Worth a watch, sure, just don't expect brilliance. It is not gonna rock your world, but might keep you intrigued enough, to leave you probably indifferent by the end.

I would have rated this higher if it wasn't for the main actress, her acting was terrible so much that it actually enraged me and has made me take time out to write this. The other actors weren't too bad, not great but what you'd expect from a horror like this. If the main one did go to drama school, she definitely attended the 'stare into space for long periods to try and enact emotion' lessons and perhaps a couple of 'dodgy ways to jut your chin out with mouth slightly ajar' tutorials but clearly skived off all the other lessons on how to actually act. Annoys me so much when they give these main roles to girls who are pretty but have nothing else going on.

Setting off into Aokigahara Forest, a teen and her friends' mission to put to rest her lingering fears of her mother's death put them into danger when the restless spirits of the dead around them take out their anger on the group for their attitudes toward them and must find a way of stopping them.

This here turned out to be quite an entertaining and enjoyable effort that gets a lot of great points about it. One of the better elements here is the use of the local custom that plays such a central part of the storyline that it really starts to feel as though the events could happen to play out as they do. Being that this is Japanese the culture and heritage of honoring one's deceased echoes throughout this one in so many ways that the great pride it places on the subject earns the eventual rampage from the ghosts later on once the mocking had been committed. It's all completely justified and rational, and that makes the ghostly actions all the more fun with several incredibly chilling gags, from simply transporting you to a different dimensional plane of reality without realizing it in order to prevent their friends from finding them in time to prevent your death, vanishing behind trees, rocks or landscape changes to avoid detection, putting your own thoughts against you and making you do something against your will or just flat- out attacking you with their ghostly powers in vicious, brutal attacks. By doing this in such a chilling and creepy location, almost seemingly filmed at the real forest itself as the attention to minute features of the area makes for an absolutely chilling, creepy area to remain the entire time, and offers up plenty of suspense from the landscape itself. With a fast pace that keeps things moving along briskly, a couple of brutal and quite bloody deaths dished out, a real sense of danger when it comes to the treatment of the cast since they're all in the firing line at some point and not too many flaws here, this is a spectacular, stand-out effort.

Rated R: Graphic Violence and Language.

As a TV movie goes this is quite a tense, supernatural thriller. The story is set in the infamous Aokigahar Forest (at the base of Mount Fuji), where mostly young Japanese folk go to kill themselves. The reality is far more disturbing than the movie, though it does cast a suitable doom and despair vibe. Actually filmed in Canada (which is far less scary). Shooting a movie at the real location would be so atmospheric and a missed opportunity but I imagine it''s forbidden to.