Open Graves (2009)

Dir: Álvaro de Armiñán

Another day, another dreadful direct-to-video disaster. This clueless clunker stars Eliza Dushku as one of a group of thirty-something "youngsters" who come into the possession of a spooky old game called Mamba. Apparently, the game dates back to the Spanish Inquisition but, luckily, all the cards that come with it are written in English. Cryptic, rhyming English that may or may not hint at the impending violent demise of those who pick the cards. This could be a simple enough premise for a decent if derivative B-Movie but "Open Graves" fails on just about every level. The characters barely even pass muster as one-dimensional cut-outs and the development of the plot is incoherent. By the time you reach the obvious (yet strangely nonsensical) twist, you'll have long lost interest in its mix of cruddy dialogue and cringefully bad CGI FX. I'll give this one star because the board game design looks pretty cool and because I'm sick of handing out zero star ratings at the moment.