Review: War Horror Movie Lacking In Scares
Ben Parker's second film is a very different war movie than people might expect. It's a slower, weirder, and at times more talky movie. She wears her themed recipes on her sleeve and chooses to slay the big action scenes. In contrast, this is both a blessing and a curse.
At the funeral, Soviet soldiers led by Branna Vasilieva (Charlotte Vega) are tasked with transporting Adolf Hitler's body from the ruins of Berlin to Moscow after World War II. While traveling through Poland, they are attacked by German forces in the desert, forcing them to choose between their mission and their lives.
The strength of "Grave" is in the cinematography and sound design. The film is beautifully shot by cinematographer Rein Kotov. Darkness and uncertainty surround Branagh's crew as they fend for themselves in uncharted territory. The sound of exploding and shrieking bullets is as painful as the sound of a branch breaking in the dark. Despite its flaws, the look and feel of this film is lovingly crafted.
One of the film's best scenes shows German partisans drugging Soviet soldiers in the woods with the hallucinogenic substance they want. The following is the only horror scene in the film, which ends the entire film when the unsuspecting soldiers are exposed to a nightmarish scene. While this scene is fantastic, it's not enough to make up for the rest of the film. The London Horror Film Festival is truly fearless for a film screened at Frightfest. Apart from the aforementioned hallucinogenic scene, what this movie manages to do is create a sense of calm that you can easily feel in any other war movie. Classifying The Funeral as a horror film is misleading at best.
The film's dynamic choreography and lack of direction come to the fore when the hallucinogenic images are removed from the subsequent action scenes. Shootout scenes consist of characters hiding behind an upturned wall or bench and occasionally popping their heads in for a few shots. Some unknown and nameless German characters die, while others flee to become cannon fodder in the next shooting scene.
Another big fault with Funeral is that the script doesn't live up to what it's trying to be, the characters feel underdeveloped and formulaic at times. Bran and his soldiers fall into predictable tropes, and many of them feel forgotten by the time the credits roll. Branagh's most trusted friend, Thor (Barry Ward), is a successful hero who feels like a real person after surviving multiple stabbings without medical attention. Ilyasov (Dan Renton Skinner) is a sleazy comic coward only to proclaim how soldiers exploit civilians in the chaos of war. These themes are fascinating, but they aren't applied to the film subtly or subtly.
It should be a comment on how the German parties chasing Braun and his men over Hitler's corpse are trying to control the narrative of the neo-fascist movements. It's a good place to start, but it's not supported by a memorable setting or stellar characters. There's clearly a lot of love and talent in Graveyard, but it doesn't stand out in the areas it needs to be compared to other great war movies of the past.
