A Cry From the Grave

Synopsis

A sorority initiation takes Julie to a cemetery at night, where she makes a charcoal rubbing of a headstone belonging to a girl who was born on the exact same day as her. Afterwards she witnesses several unexplainable occurrences--a plea for help shows up on her computer screen, the charcoal rubbing flutters with no wind and a series of dreams where she experiences events through the eyes of another person. During the initiation, however, she scratches her leg on a metal fence and over time the wound becomes infected.

The headstone from the rubbing belongs to Michelle, who was murdered the previous year. Julie soon becomes obsessed with solving Michelle’s murder, to the point of ignoring her studies. Yet in the middle of her quest, she become romantically involved with a young man with a tarnished past. She learns from Nate, the groundskeeper at the cemetery, that Michelle’s husband, Tom, was believed to have killed her, but there was no evidence to prove it. As she focuses her attention on Tom, she sees a man riddled with guilt who seeks solace from a bottle.

After a dream reveals the location of the murder weapon, Julie returns to the cemetery. By now the infection to her leg is taking its toll. She digs up the weapon the killer had hidden in Michelle’s grave when Tom confronts her. After an exchange of words, and weak from the infection, she collapses. As Tom helps her, Nate comes up from behind and knocks him unconscious.

Nate, after having seen Michelle at the funeral of her parents, knew there was only one way he could have her and so he killed her. Now he sees her every day as well as those of other women he killed. And now he wants to add Julie. After a brief struggle, and when Julie is on the brink of death, Michelle appears. In a panic, Nate flees from the apparition and falls into an open grave where he breaks his neck.

In the end, Julie is unsure how much Michelle had guided her from the grave or how much was due to the infection. And in a final twist of irony, Nate is buried a short distance away from Michelle’s grave.