The virtues of small-budget moviemaking are on full display in writer-director Jason Harang’s The All-Healing Grave, a film noir homage that, despite modest means, delivers atmosphere, ping-pong dialogue and a certain je ne sais pas as a smart-mouthed waitress takes on both organized crime and law enforcement.
Molly (Olivia Peck) is at rock bottom in a dead-end town working as a waitress at a 24-hour diner. She wants to leave and never look back, but she’s so broke her only outfit is her waitress uniform, and without a car and some cash, skipping town’s hard to do. Then one night a mysterious suit-and-fedora-wearing man (Scott Gremillion) makes a lucrative proposal, but in accepting, Molly becomes caught between this small town’s criminals and the law. Now she somehow must try to stay ahead of both.
The All-Healing Grave describes itself as a “death-rattle” noir and not without reason. With all due respect to the real-world locations where Harang shot his movie, The All-Healing Grave takes place in that sort of town that forgot it died a long time ago. Harang captures both the grim present and the longing for what’s beyond. This is an open tomb, devoid of anything but vultures.
Olivia Peck stars as Molly, a small-town waitress desperate to escape her dead-end life in The All-Healing Grave.
“Molly becomes caught between this small town’s criminals and the law. Now she must somehow try to stay ahead of both.”
Far from dead: Harang’s knack for dialogue and clear love for the movies that inspired it. Over the greasy diner countertop, Peck and Gremillion exchange lines that could have been spoken by Bogart and Bacall, with Gremillion’s sass trying to poke holes in Peck’s sardonic exterior. The stylized dialogue in this current-day world of ours is its own kind of fun, and Peck and Gremillion have a lot of fun with it too, with the latter savoring every word that leaves his mouth. This also allows a certain suspension of disbelief when The All-Healing Grave is technically limited by its means, and the effect is a viewing experience that punches far above its weight.
The stylistic choices also put a glossy sheen on a plot that leaves a lot to the imagination. The All-Healing Grave may have adopted the noir genre’s character tropes and dialogue, but it forgoes its convoluted plot and twists. But hey: criminals try to make moves, cops try to stop them; the rest of us must try to live as well. That’s enough sometimes.
The All-Healing Grave even dabbles in the surreal at choice moments, opening its downtrodden world up to something greater, and taken together, it all proves a very modest budget doesn’t need to limit world-building, impact, and entertainment value when you excel at the things that cost nothing: acting, writing, and creative decision-making.
"…punches far above its weight..."
