Native American curses suck. But what we did to incur those curses sucks way more. A backwoods Michigan town and the connection it holds to the haunted titular Indian burial ground draws a psychiatrist off of his leave of absence to do some investigating. Town librarian Lori Coker has just returned from Bone Hill a raving lunatic (“Mother Earth must be cured! The Chief of the hill must fight the angry spirit! That which is good must prevail!” she screams this while brandishing a ceremonial dagger) and our psychiatrist hero Wade (who had stepped away following the death of his wife… hit that overdramatic flashback!) attempts to help the girl. Strange bloodwork intrigues Wade and he’s sure there is more going on than just trauma. His sessions with Lori leads to investigating the burial ground and puts him on a collision course with supernatural danger and possession. Lori’s uncle is a tribal elder so he’ll be around to fill in any backstory we need (hit that lovely budget-conscious digital animation folklore!) in case we don’t want to read along with Wade’s online research. Rituals, world-ending evil and sacrifice are all in the cards. Sheriff Barney Howe (Roger Callard, who was Conan the Librarian in UHF) is hanging around and looks like some bronzer exploded on his face (hey, it works for him) and was smart enough to avoid his magical mustache. The fine folkloric foundation to the horror is rendered completely silly thanks to a production that feels like it belongs to one of those educational dramas your substitute teacher would have the class watching in middle school. There’s a script with heart and thought put into it but it’s just so damn corny it’s a bit embarrassing. Luckily, I find that charming and preferable to those mean-spirited endurance tests or the even less enjoyable toilet-humored idiotics of those who have an inability to tell a story that pollute the genre. Some rubbery gore, a wonderfully realized monster (if you got a soft spot for Savage Harvest) and the world’s least convincing FBI agent (well, at least until recently) make things a bit more fun. The film tries its damndest and I will not crap all over anything that gives as much of a shit as this flick does. Granted, if I were in a classroom some thirty years ago, I’d probably be snickering and rolling my eyes at my friends.
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