A simple story told in a simple way, An Unquiet Grave is a clunky title for a rather elegant, if occasionally slow, supernatural thriller.
A grieving husband (Jacob A. Ware) has lost his beloved wife, Jules, in a car accident. In conversations unseen by the viewer, he and her surviving twin sister Ava (Christine Nyland) have agreed to do something, some kind of ritual maybe, that will bring Jules back from the dead.
As the two drive through a quiet night to the site of the crash and Jules’s death, they cryptically refer to what’s about to happen. We aren’t quite sure if they have good intentions, or if one of them is keeping some key facts hidden from the other, but we have an idea that not all will go to plan.
What follows will remain unrevealed by me – some of it you can probably guess, but guessing is something you will do, and that’s not a bad thing.
It’s to the film’s credit, even if it was necessitated by a limited budget, that it keeps a lot of things offscreen.
Afterall, folks will remember that the mechanical shark in Jaws was meant to appear a lot more often than it did. Technical troubles with the Great White forced Steven Spielberg to only show it sparingly. An accident that became a brilliant move.
An Unquiet Grave is neither brilliant nor in the same league as Jaws, but it does benefit from having a two-person cast and a lot of the scenes with just the two actors sitting in a car or sitting in chairs in the kitchen.
Of course, those limitations force canny directing and writing (The Father took place in just one apartment and it was amazing, for example) and Christine Nyland, who co-wrote the script with director Terence Kay, are hit and miss in that regard.
However, with a running time of just 76 minutes, it’s not an interminable sit. So, a mixed bag for a good effort: much to admire, but falling short of awesome.
An Unquiet Grave streams on Shudder beginning June 24th | 2 out of 4 Stars
