Beyond The Grave

Dir: Davi De Oliveira Pinheiro

Year: 2010

Cast: Rafael Tombini

Genre: Horror/Drama/Fantasy/Western

Cert: Not Rated

Rating: ★

IMDb

Let me start by saying I'm extremely grateful to be chosen by Lockheart Films to review this officially and I'd be happy to do more any time, but alas, this was a film I downright hated.

Beyond The Grave follows Lockheart, a sort-of post apocalyptic police officer/bounty hunter type as he travels the devastated ruins of Brazil in search of "The Dark Rider" - He is accompanied by two teenagers, Shooter and Nina, who are on a revenge mission of their own. On their journey they encounter zombies and friends that could help them, until they eventually cross paths with the infamous "Dark Rider"

That's about as much as I can really say plot-wise, as much as I hated this, I don't necessarily want to spoil it in any way. I don't even know where to begin really, there is so, so, SO much wrong with this fucking film. 

I'll start with the plot: This is without a doubt the most unnecessarily convoluted film I've ever watched. It's literally as if it was being made up as it went along. No plot point merged in any way seamlessly, it's like they took the rushes of a whole day of shooting, brought them off to be edited but then gave the equipment to a whole new crew to shoot the rest of it, without telling them what they shot previously.

None of it makes any sense at all, it's almost as if it's trying to be mysterious and psychedelic like Dust Devil but ends up so half assed and senseless. The reasoning behind some of the scenes is just fucking ridiculous. Some zombie just pulls a gun on Lockheart at one point and takes a shot, which was daft anyway, but there is just no mention of him ever again.

Which brings me onto my next point, Make-up and Inconsistent Zombies: There is roughly about 20 zombies in this film in total, they're also very unclear as to whether they're zombies or demons because they don't act like fucking either of those things as much as they try to. Each zombie just walks around as if they're hungover after a a brutal night of drinking. They don't seem to give one fuck about the people who are running around. Their make up is absolutely atrocious, it was literally grey paint with black paint in any facial grooves. It look awful, it was like that "I like turtles" kid from years ago. Simply awful. But the inconsistency comes from the OTHER zombies, the one who brandishes the gun has lots of make up on him, even though it looks like a garlic pepper pizza with holes cut out to make eyes, slapped on his face. The others later on are bluish and look as if they have jam slathered on their faces. It's truly, truly awful.

There's some horribly noticeable green screen in some places too and ALL of the violence looks like it was done on the spot, but not in an intelligent Tom Savini way; more like a "I have a bottle of Ribeena handy if we need special fx" - ANY sort of injury to someone, they're spitting up watery red liquid that looks more like a delicious beverage than blood. One scene in particular made me legitimately face-palm, was a person being shot in the head at point blank range and a fucking pea of blood flies out. It was atrocious. All the other gore was done so half assed and inconsistent with each take. The continuity in this film was all over the place.

Which of course brings me to my biggest gripe with this film, the lighting. Jesus Cunting Christ it may very well have the worst lighting I have ever seen in what is laughably called a feature film. EVERY single scene was lit by what I can assume was a fucking app on an iPhone. maybe about 20 of those glue together and held on a stick. It's terribly over exposed in EVERY scene, there is impossible shadowing and unrealistic positions of light. A scene where they're all having dinner in an abandoned school looks like a fucking school play. A disgusting yellow lamp is covering the entire room by the side, projecting massive silhouettes onto the wall. Even the outdoor scenes were fucking drenched in horrible lighting - In the blisteringly sunny Brazil!! 

There was one scene of good lighting that made me think "Right, there might be SOME chance of atmosphere here" - Literally as soon as that fantasy crossed my mind, the lighting went to it's absolute worst; In a room, lit only by a grating on the wall, yet from the OTHER direction, there is a golden shine of one of the characters face, very blatantly being lit. It was just one of the many nails in this doomed coffin.

The atmosphere throughout was a mess, music wise especially. The only scene in the film I liked was the opening titles following a road. It was very 70's and looked great but the song playing over it absolutely destroyed the scene, some angsty Brazilian rock song that just annihilated the tone then and there. Another scene which I can only describe as "Lessons in using mind bullets" (As shit as it sounds) - Has some cheery fucking pop song playing over it, to illustrate some sort of bonding scene but instead just infuriated me to the core. 

At least 4 times throughout this film I was checking the time to see when it would be over. I'm sad to say it may legitimately be one of, if not THE worst film I've ever watched. From both a viewer and film-maker's perspective. So much so that I'd sooner watch Thanatomorphose again. I didn't feel like I was watching a film at all here, I literally felt as if I was grading an extremely poor and overly complicated and pretentious college short film that was unacceptably long. It's so poorly made and what absolutely DISGUSTED me to see, was the fucking budget for this film. I literally tried to calculate it at the end in an honest way and came up with the figure of no more than $1,000. It was fucking $150,000!!! American dollars too!!! It was probably mainly used on those fucking lights as well because there's no way it went into ANY other piece of production.

Jeremy Gardner's zombie/drama masterpiece, The Battery was done on a mere $6,000 and it's absolutely LIGHT YEARS ahead of this film. Story, acting, pacing, effects and the general production of cinematography, lighting, sound etc. It's all absolutely top notch and astoundingly well made on such a minimal budget. At the 22 days it took to shoot this garbage it would be roughly $7,000 a day, which is quite frankly insulting. 

It is a true shame about this film because I was actually quite excited to see it as the only other Brazilian films I've seen are big budgeted crime sagas. So to see an indie horror was going to be refreshing and interesting, but it was in fact exhausting and infuriating. I truly hope this isn't the standard of Brazilian indie cinema. 

I legitimately can't find a single thing I liked about it, other than the opening titles which were immediately sullied by the appalling music choice.I would not recommend this film to anybody, it's not even in the category of "So bad it's good" like Sharknado or The Room. It's just simply terrible.