The Flicks
 

The Gravedancers

After an old friend dies in a car accident, Harris (Dominic Purcell, Prison Break), Kira (Josie Maran, Van Helsing), and Sid (Marcus Thomas, You Kill Me) reunite to mourn the death in the only way they know how: getting shwasted, reading demonic incantations, and dancing on graves.  Not content with stomping around on any old grave, they pick the graves of an ax murderer, a child pyromaniac, and a serial rapist.  Obviously not happy with the living performing Irish Jigs on their foreheads, the three ghosts come back and show the ones responsible that you don’t mess with the dead. At their wits end, they all turn to the same paranormal investigator who, in a rush against time, attempts to save them all from the returned spirits.

When the film originally released in 2007, there was a lot of talk about the amazing creature designs used and after the ghosts start revealing their true forms, I can see why.  Their gruesome faces remained in my brain long after the film was over.  I particularly liked the design of the Emma ghost.  One of the scariest scenes in the film occurs when Harris wakes up to Emma lying in the bed next to him. With that said, the film is a little slow to get started, but once the ghosts make their presence known, it gets good and stays that way.

My only real complaint about The Gravedancers is the inclusion of Marcus Thomas as Sid Vance.  The rest of the cast does a great job of pulling off their roles, but Sid’s character is so annoying and overacted by Marcus that it grated on my nerves every time he spoke. It makes it slightly better knowing that he was the one to read the incantation and unleash the ghosts in the first place.  The inclusion of Dominic Purcell as Harris was an odd choice, but he ended up being one of the better characters in the film, remaining stoic when the other characters started freaking out. 
 

Wicked Little Things

When Karen Tunny (Lori Heuring, Mulholland Drive) loses her husband, she inherits his family’s vacation home up in the mountains.  Looking for the chance to grieve and escape her busy life, she takes her two daughters Sarah (Scout Taylor-Compton, Halloween) and Emma (Chloe Moretz, Kick-Ass) with her to settle down in the new home.  Unbeknownst to her, the new house rests near an abandoned mine where a group of young children were buried alive in the early 1900’s.  The spirits of those trapped children rise every night to feast off the living.  When Emma befriends Mary, one of the spirits, Karen mistakes it for a make believe friend.  When Emma goes to the mine one night to play with Mary, Karen and Sarah must chase her down. 

The spirits of the children are by far the scariest villains I have ever seen in a horror film. These four foot tall monsters carry pickaxes and sledgehammers which they use to mutilate someone before they devour their insides. Awesome.  Now I’m going to have to explain why I piss my pants every time I see my cousins.

Wicked Little Things isn’t without its problems though.  There’s quite a few bad horror clichés contained in this one.  There’s a truck that won’t start, a little girl whose friends with a ghost, a car that gets stuck in the mud, and a crazy man that no one listens to but really should.

Lori Heuring puts on a believable performance as the concerned mother while Scout Taylor-Compton does the standard teenager part well.  Chloe Moretz is always great and after delivering awesome performances in Kick-Ass and Let Me In, it’s nice to see her in anything. The real surprise here is the inclusion of Ben Cross as the crazy Aaron Hanks.  His character is odd enough to freak you out, but he’s smart enough to survive as long as he has on the mountain. 
 

Audio and Video

Despite cramming both films on one Blu-ray, they feature the same 1080p High Def widescreen presentation.  Lionsgate has done a great job with this collection, offering solid blacks with very little grain.  The English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track provides excellent booms and screams that you’d expect with films like these.  Dialogue is sometimes overpowered by the ambient track, but it doesn’t happen often enough to lessen the experience.
 

Special Features and Packaging

After Dark Horrorfest Double Feature to Die For Vol 1: The Gravedancers and Wicked Little Thingson Blu-ray comes as a single-disc collection in a standard recycle case with the following extras:

Gravedancers:

• Audio Commentary with director Mike Mendez and composer Joseph Bishara
• “A Grave Undertaking” making of featurette
• “Making the Ghosts” featurette
• Deleted scenes with optional commentary
• Storyboard galleries
• Original trailer with optional commentary

The commentary is actually worth a listen.  It’s clear that director Mike Mendez enjoyed putting this movie together and his enthusiasm comes through in spades. He gives great detail on everything from creature design to how he felt about the actors.  The “Grave Undertaking” is a short behind the scenes featurette with a lot of cast interview bits thrown in.  Most of the deleted scenes are caps on the ends of other used scenes, but there a couple of extra bits with Vincent and Frances that are worth watching. 

The storyboard galleries are just that.  The making of the ghosts featurette runs about 12 minutes and is probably the coolest feature on the disc, since the creatures are by far the coolest part of the film.  Starting from early Photoshop drawings to clay and molds, it’s awesome to see how these super creepy beings came to life.

Wicked Little Things:

• Audio commentary with Director J.S. Cardone and Actress Lori Heuring

The commentary track offers some insight.  J.S. Cardone has a lot to say about filming children, the aspect of them killing the way they did, and how much fun they had “eating” the dead.  Lori is pretty quiet throughout but chimes in on a scene every now and then.  It’s all pretty informative and entertaining. 
 

Overall

The first volume in the After Dark collection on Blu-ray offers some pretty good scares in the form of awesome creature design in Gravedancers and overly creepy children in Wicked Little Things.  There’s a little predictability and plenty of horror film clichés used throughout, but this volume is certainly worth adding to your collection.

ComicsOnline gives After Dark Horrorfest Double Feature to Die For Vol 1: The Gravedancers and Wicked Little Things on Blu-ray  3.5 out of 5 creepy little children.

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