Today we’re talking about The Graves, the fifth of eight in the After Dark Horrorfest and sent to me by Lions Gate.

I admit, openly, that when I saw the first couple minutes of The Graves, I was worried.  Between the openly Quentin Tarantino style opening, preceded immediately by a burly blacksmith who bludgeoned a family to death with his hammer, it was a cause for alarm.

And yet there was some cause for hope, for the writer, director and producer of The Graves was responsible for Evil Ernie, which remains to this day one of my personal favorite comic titles.

Would it continue in that vein?

When sisters Abby and Megan Graves go out for one last weekend of fun and adventure, they find themselves at the Skull City Mine.  But what they find at the Skull City Mine is something a whole lot worse than they ever expected.  And that something is out to kill them both.  But when the Graves sisters fight back, Skull City is in for a lot more problem than it ever visited on anyone else.  Nothing is safe there now–not even the many secrets the town hides.

And it’s hiding a LOT of them.

The Graves is a strange sort of study in contrast, with part of it being a wild, terrific romp and the other part being so low-budget-cheesy that it fails on most every level.  For instance, the town’s secrets are pretty compelling, and the first half hour or so does a good job of holding attention and building interest.  But then the Graves sisters waver so wildly between improbable badasses and sniveling girly girls that it’s like Pulido couldn’t quite figure out which archetype to use, so he just used ALL of them.

So much of The Graves is good and exciting, while so much of it falls flat.  It’s actually perfectly placed, right in the middle of the After Dark Horrorfest.  It’s not the worst, and it’s far from the best.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this mostly solid addition to the After Dark Horrorfest a seven out of ten for being really good in sections but never quite able to sustain its own momentum.