Director: Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro
MPAA Rating: NR
Film Pulse Score: 1.5/10
Davi de Oliveira Pinheiro wrote and directed Beyond the Grave, setting it in his native Brazil and filming it in Portuguese. The result is one of the most incoherent films I have seen as I remained at a loss for what has happening from moment to moment. There seems to be – at its heart – a supernatural story involving a demon in a post-apocalyptic world and the police officer hell bent on killing it; I like that idea, but the execution left much to be desired.
That the world is a post-apocalyptic one is best illustrated by the deserted landscape in which the characters exist as well as the presence of several zombies scattered throughout some shots. The film opens with the officer killing a gang of four although it is never made clear who the four are or why the officer had it out for them. The only suggestion that there is a demon on the loose for which the officer is searching involves a woman whose eyes sometimes turn red. The woman is accompanied by two men, one of whom has a harmonica that brings incapacitation to anyone who hears his music and another who has a bow-and-arrow for use against her enemies.
The officer first encounters a young couple who accompany him on his journey. They are searching for a man who hurt them, though it is never clear who the mystery man is or how they were injured by him. The trio will meet up with another three individuals – a middle-aged man and a woman who might be his daughter and her boyfriend/husband – living in a secluded set of buildings. All of these additional characters’ place in the story remained a mystery to me throughout. Unfortunately for the young couple, they are killed by the female demon and her henchmen. The other tree characters will last longer, but each of them also suffers some horrible fate.
The demon switches bodies once its host is killed. And so, when the officer and one of the latter three characters kills the henchmen and then the female, the demon takes over the officer’s new-found friend’s body. This leads to a brief showdown between the middle-aged man and the officer. Once the officer kills the man, the demon enters the officer’s body. He is able, through sheer will-power it seems, able to fend off the demon’s attack on his soul and exorcise the entity before it consumes him.
The film plays like a western of sorts with crossbows, pistols, and bows-and-arrows as everyone’s weapons of choice. The landscape is barren and the outfits seem like they are updated versions of something one would see in a John Ford film. The film’s setting is thus the most interesting thing about the movie. But there is no story to speak of, no script that makes sense, and no real character development. I remain unsure about what I saw and see no reason for making such a movie as this. Beyond the Grave is Pinheiro’s first feature and so perhaps that is explanation enough for the crudeness of the film’s script and direction. Hopefully, future projects will be more polished and coherent.
