Ranjeet S. Marwa serves up a curious concoction that starts off like 127 Hours and then morphs into Misery, which, after it finds its feet, gathers momentum and generates palpable intensity. The mixing of these two ingredients could have benefited from being folded in instead of cross-fading. Still, that didn’t stop me from enjoying Dig Me No Grave.
Warren Lee Hicks is Scott Parker, a hunter with a hearing aid, an outdoorsman past his prime. Why is longtime hunting buddy Fred (Mark Strange) calling it quits and his Linda (Shally Tria Amanda) pestering him to do the same? Scott flees into the solace of wild nature, looking to prove he is a mighty hunter, driven by the ghostly voice of his mighty hunting old man, who forged himself onto his son.
But as Parker tastes the success of a fine kill, victory soon transforms to terror as a ravenous grizzly who smells the blood in the air confronts Sean. Though Sean is loaded, locked, and ready to rock, the bear keeps on coming, pinning Parker to the ground beneath his weight. Sean struggles in pain, eventually pulling a revolver and blowing the bear’s brains out.
“…trapped beneath the enormous grizzly’s corpse…”
Sigh of relief, right? Wrong. Sean is now trapped beneath the enormous grizzly’s corpse, unable to move or even attempt to free himself. The days pass, and Parker so gives in to the idea he’s going to die. Eventually, delirium and dehydration set in, and he passes out. But Sean Parker does not die. Instead, he wakes to find that his savior, a PTS-suffering hermit veteran Pat (James Jaysen Bryhan), has done what Annie did in the novel Misery, but not in the film, and severed Sean’s lower legs.
This is the turning point at which the picture picks up steam as Sean struggles to learn what he can about this man who refuses to kill him, doesn’t mind torturing him, yet does a fine job of cleaning and tending to his wounds. It’s truly a richly twisted scenario that drifts into predictable territory here and there. But then it changes direction, so hang on to your hats.
Gary Piazza’s script has some good and awkward beats that make the duration tedious at certain turns until the mystery/thriller elements kick in. I think if it had remained a survival story, one could have descended into boredom rapidly. Luckily, director Marwa and his cinematographer, Dominic Ellis, tango superbly infuses the later acts with eerie suspense and pulse-raising reveals.
Dig Me No Grave deserves top marks for ambition, as far as the fusion of the stories it was attempting to bring together. But it unfortunately comes off top light and bottom heavy. The payoffs are hits, one after another. It’s a shame, then. That’s where the movie stumbles the most – in the setup. Even the strongest, most passionate performance, coming from Warren Lee Hicks, shifts from mundane to terrific as the genre swap occurs. Still, this movie will reward those who stay till the credits. It leaves this reviewer, anyway, gratified by what was achieved, yet wanting what might have been should different creative choices have worked in the film’s favor.
"…starts off like 127 Hours and then morphs into Misery..."
