The Cemetery

"DEMONIC POSSESSION IS REAL"

The Cemetery is the latest horror film directed by Adam Ahlbrandt (Cross Bearer). Adam Ahlbrandt has moved his way up the ranks of low budget horror big time these past few years. Cross Bearer got a damn fine ride on the hype train before it's new release through Toetag. It would be difficult to argue that the films success is undeserved. That being said this one takes the cake as Albrandt's best film thus far in my opinion. In the film we follow a group of non-believing paranormal investigators filming a reality show called "Ghost Seekers". They've been working this gig for awhile now and have been far and wide and every single "haunted" location has been a major bust. For the crew these shows are just a solid excuse for knockin' boots and rippin' bongs while making some cash in the process. For this episode of the show they are traveling into the woods at a location where hundreds of possessed people were killed by priests during extremely violent exorcisms. In the good ol' days holy water wasn't the go-to for an exorcism. A solid decapitation did the trick just fine.

Little does our team of low rent Ghostbusters know the story told about this location is in fact not a load of bullshit. Andrea, the one member of the team who does actually take interest in the supernatural, begins to cough and struggle to breathe during the seance. The rest of the crew decides to completely ignore this nice little warning. There's no time for the supernatural, they've got joints to smoke and vaginas to poke. As the law of the woods states, when joints get smoked and vaginas get poked penis cleansing, death and carnage ALWAYS follow shortly after. The film delivers and we get all three of these things mighty quickly.

Shit hits the fan before we know it. Affairs are revealed, people are angry, bones are removed from legs and used as weapons. I'll be willing to bet that last one got your attention. The Cemetery doesn't waste much time putting it's viewer knee deep in gore. The effects look fantastic and they are served up in surplus. One of my personal favorite decapitations committed to film is contained within. I won't give away which one it is (trust me there's plenty) but you'll know it when you get there. I've also got to give major props to whoever designed the contacts for the possessed. Those look amazing and are truly eerie to gaze at. One of my favorite things about the scenes involving effects is how spastic the editing gets. These sequences get just crazy enough with the cuts to cause a slight disorienting feel without overkilling it.

The one gripe I do have with the film is the soundtrack. The music is great, courtesy of Willowtip Records. It sports some of the best bands on the label and as a metalhead myself I enjoyed the tunes. That being said I've never been one to care much for metal being utilized in horror. This is simply a matter of preference but to a certain extent I feel like a blasting soundtrack is enough to take a person out of the film. As stated before this isn't a huge issue, just me nitpicking. It is easily a better soundtrack than the endless list of horror films that blast shitastic nu-metal/metalcore tracks at any given opportunity.

Overall The Cemetery is an extremely solid low budget horror flick. It's great to see a good film tackling this subject on a budget. There are many flicks that come out constantly in this subgenre but very few hit the mark. The Cemetery hits the mark and then some. We get gore sequences that pack a punch almost seamlessly with classy scenes of dialogue that are hysterical. Any film that has a previous victim's bones being used as a murder weapon is perfection in my book. I'm very interested to see where Ahlbrandt goes from here. Definitely recommend this one to indie horror fans and gorehounds out there alike. GET IT!

This is my second time reviewing this film. The original was in the only print attempt I ever did for Foul Feast (and indefinitely the last). Upon buying Ahlbrandt's films again for their new releases (one from Massacre Video, another from Toetag Inc.) I figured it'd be cool to upload some reviews after being able to watch the movies multiple times and sitting with them for awhile. Plenty more reviews to come and I'll be re-reviewing quite a few things from that issue. The site is officially revived as of now. For good this time. No one month and done bullshit.