A Cold Grave review.
A Cold Grave has the trappings of a found footage movie…but its lead performance offers us something new.
New movie reviews will not contain spoilers.
A Cold Grave
Directed by Brendan Rudnicki
Written by Brendan Rudnicki, Kellan Rudnicki and Ciara Wojtala
Starring Benjamin L. Newmark, Tatum Bates, Stuart Maxheimer, Michael Lamberti, Reggie Johnson and Andrew Thomas
A Cold Grave Review
Writer/director Brendan Rudnicki has quietly been building his own cinematic universe of woods related horror stories. Into the Forest, The Girl in Cabin 13, Forest of Death, Horror in the Forest…and now A Cold Grave. I’ve only seen the last two. Forest of Death was a fun time with shape shifters in some creepy woods. A Cold Grave takes a side character from that movie and puts him front and center. All the titles are currently streaming on Tubi if you are interested in how the forest horror saga has developed to this point. I’m not sure if movies other than Forest of Death are connected to this one…but I suspect they are.
A Cold Grave is a found footage movie. Let’s get it out of the way immediately. Everything that just popped into your head…the answer is yes. You know what to expect as a baseline with found footage horror. If you hate the format…just go ahead and move right along. I’m not going to convince you otherwise and neither will A Cold Grave. For those on the fence, however, this is an interesting one to fire up.
Roger (Benjamin L. Newmark) heads into the forest to find out what happened to his little sister Kaylee (Tatum Bates). She’s been missing long enough that he doesn’t expect to find her alive. He doesn’t believe she could get lost in the woods…they grew up with them. He does, however, suspect foul play from her boyfriend Eli. They, along with friend Charles, went missing weeks ago. When police find Charles with his eyes gouged out…he cuts his own throat. There’s something evil in these woods, and Roger is going to find out what.
The opening of A Cold Grave is a strong one. It introduces the plot, gives Roger a soapbox to explain his motivations in detail, and features the Charles situation. Before the opening titles run the world of the film has been swiftly laid out for us. It doesn’t take long into Roger’s journey for strange things to happen either. A man in a creepy mask begins to stalk him through the woods. With his flashlight cutting through the darkness and no way to know from which direction the scare will pop up from…A Cold Grave sets a tone that will be tough to maintain. It doesn’t.
The story slows down for a good stretch of time. There are still some odd things happening in the background or just out of Roger’s line of sight. The effectiveness diminishes over time…but the movie becomes something a bit unexpected. For all of its mystery…the found footage conceit…the jump scare moments…A Cold Grave turns out to be a performance horror movie. It succeeds largely because of the work that Newmark does scene after scene.
Newmark is alone on screen throughout most of A Cold Grave. He’s also adlibbing all his dialog. And he’s crushing it. There’s a plot and some twists and some…zombies? Roger finds abandoned belongings of others who the forest has taken. This allows him (and us) to watch other people’s footage. Including, eventually, Kaylee’s. There’s plenty of interesting moments and spooky goings on to fill the run time (at least after the story picks up again from its lull).
But that is all overshadowed by Newmark’s performance. He’s doing a full character, complete with an accent…but he’s doing it so naturally it’s fascinating. When we meet Roger, he feels like a bit of a caricature. Over the course of the story, however, he feels very real. A loving brother who has put himself in a terrible position. The woods make people crazy. He knew it before he entered them. He was party to the shape shifting madness in Forest of Death, after all. Still…he must go. Knowing he isn’t going to find a happy ending. Knowing the woods will likely take him too. He’s an interesting character. Newmark makes him something even more than that.
As for the movie…it has its ups and downs. It’s trapped by the convention as most found footage films are. There are long stretches where not much happens. Thankfully Newmark is there the whole time. The scares start strong but taper off eventually. The ending is a highlight. A necessity in these low budget flicks. It’s good looking for a found footage movie too. Clearly the amount of time Rudnicki has spent shooting the woods is paying off. Some of the shots of Roger’s flashlight cutting through the pitch black of night are downright beautiful.
If you enter these woods…know what you’re getting into. If you can’t handle found footage…A Cold Grave isn’t going to win you over. But you’ll be missing out on a strong central performance that carries a decent, if slight, story to something more. Newmark’s commitment to the character shines its own light through the darkness.
Scare Value
We all know what to expect from found footage movies at this point. A Cold Grave has all of it. It adds in some effective jump scares…and honestly could have come and gone as nothing more than that. It has a big trick up its sleeve, however. Benjamin L. Newmark’s performance is so committed…so interesting…the movie is elevated by his presence. And he’s always on screen. Which means there is always something good to watch.
3/5
A Cold Grave Link
Streaming on Tubi
