Two down and out stoners are trying to make their way into the movie business by providing props to a pompous director who is working on a new horror film. They are assigned to come up with a realistic-looking severed arm prop for one of the movies grisly scenes. But when the director doesn't find any of the props to be sufficiently realistic, the two pot heads hatch a hair-brained scheme to use a real arm instead.
They obtain a cadaver through a relative who can apparently obtain just about anything, and then they remove the arm using a chainsaw. The director is impressed, but there's just one problem. The cadaver has become a zombie and it wants its arm back. Now the stoners and the film crew, including a cast of jocks and cheerleaders, must survive a night in a cemetery while being stalked by a machete wielding zombie.
When I randomly selected this film out of a stack of zombie movies, it was the luck of the draw. In this case - bad luck. Gravestoned is as stupid as the title would imply. The film starts out with two scantily clad young women speaking valley girl dialect searching for a pair of missing panties in a crypt. A strange glow beams from behind a creaky old door. They open it, scream, and the screen goes blank. There is little improvement from that point forward.
Let's start with the characters. We have a few asinine pot heads, a ridiculous movie director, and from there it gets worse. The rest of the characters are essentially the cast of the film they are supposed to be making. The male characters are a bunch of dim witted jocks, and the female characters are supposed to be cheerleaders. Neither group contains any likeable characters. The dialogue is poorly written, and poorly delivered. The acting is atrocious.
What about the monster? Well, it is supposed to be a zombie. I guess it is since it apparently starts out as a cadaver. Then, without explanation, it returns from the dead. But if it is looking for brains it is about to be sorely disappointed by this cast of characters. Anyhow, then it picks up a machete and starts using that to kill its victims. Apparently the director couldn't decide if this would be a slasher movie or a zombie movie so it became some unfortunate hybrid, neither aspect of which was effective.
The dim witted characters ultimately file one by one into a mysterious crypt only to be slaughtered, mostly off screen. The unfortunate thing is that some of the characters survived. If there is a sequel, I will not be watching it.
Gravestoned has been marketed as "a horror film for stoners". Presumably this movie is supposed to be more entertaining if you are stoned. But I wasn't, and I have serious doubts that it would have made a lot of difference. The reality is that this movie is a snore fest which attempts to rely on inane drug humour, objectification of young pretty women, and a fairly pathetic zombie in place of things like plot, suspense, character development, atmosphere, and scares. Stoner or not, my advice is to avoid this unfortunate production at all costs.
0 Scottish Terriers out of 5
Not rated: contains violence, language, drug content.
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