The Grave 1996

An unseen figure in a jail cell with a raspy voice tells a story to another undetermined occupant in the cell.

Two years earlier, brothers King and Tyn are serving a 20-year sentence in a Southern prison for joyriding in a stolen car. A fellow inmate, Wex [Giovanni Ribisi] whispers about a local legend of a vast fortune hidden in the grave of Masterson, a legendary local millionaire. King strikes a tentative deal with a crooked officer, J.C. Cole [John Diehl], offering a share of the fortune in exchange for a precarious escape. The plan isn’t perfectly clean, but it succeeds: the brothers break out of the jail under the cover of night.

On the run, a botched attempt to steal civilian clothes from a laundry line leaves Tyn wounded by a homeowner’s gun. The brothers manage to borrow a stranger’s truck to avoid pursuit and salvage the chance to disappear. Yet they fear the hospital, so they reluctantly seek out an estranged ally, mortician Travis Purcell [Anthony Michael Hall], who once helped put them away. King promises he will repay the favor, and Tyn is left in Travis’s care. King then makes a fragile return to his old life, visiting his ex-girlfriend Jordan [Gabrielle Anwar], who isn’t pleased to see him but agrees to spend the night with him. The moment is observed by J.C. Cole, who continues to pull the strings behind the scenes. King vows to bring Jordan into the payday, but she remains skeptical about his claims.

Travis determines that Tyn’s wound is mortal and threatens to withhold medical help unless Tyn reveals everything he knows about the supposed grave. The confession comes too late for Tyn, who dies soon after. With his slow-witted companions Cletus [Donal Logue] and Boo [Max Perlich] in tow, the trio heads to the grave to dig up the wealth themselves. They unearth Masterson’s coffin, finding only a decayed corpse wearing a ring on its finger. Travis pockets one ring, convinced it must have some worth. Boo, keeping watch for interference, knocks out a passerby who turns out to be King returning to the site.

Morning reveals the grim reality: Boo is knocked unconscious by J.C.—who weighs down Boo’s legs and dumps him in a creek, forcing him to drown or die by other means. Boo eventually awakens, and J.C. offers a deadly choice: reveal who told him about the grave or face a gruesome fate. Boo names Travis and Cletus, and then drowns.

Travis and Cletus press on to Jordan’s antique shop to interpret markings on Masterson’s ring. Jordan explains that Masterson, an elderly man, married a very young woman, Ophelia, hoping for an heir, only to discover infertility—so he bought a child instead, who vanished after both their deaths. She also reveals that the ring is useless without its companion, spurring them to return to the grave. When they unearth the coffin again, King is miraculously alive, though woozy. They retrieve the second ring and save him, but King quickly deduces it was Travis who left him for dead. A second visit to Jordan yields a crucial clue: a Latin message visible only when the rings interlock, but she asks for a share of the fortune in return.

The mystery points to Ophelia’s grave as the true resting place of the treasure. The men lift away the stone and discover a ladder leading to an underground tunnel, followed by an iron door and a vault containing Ophelia’s dismembered remains alongside vast cash and jewelry—the fortune Masterson hid for her. In their fevered triumph, someone seals the vault from the outside, trapping them inside. Jordan emerges from Ophelia’s grave as the party responsible for locking them in. She confronts J.C., who reveals his plan to kill her, only to be outmaneuvered as she shoots him and, with a hidden shotgun, turns the tables.

Back in the jail cell, the storyteller is revealed to be Jordan, now speaking with an artificial larynx, explaining that J.C.’s status as a cop dooms her to death by the electric chair. The priest probes what happened to Masterson’s changeling, but Jordan offers no firm answer, hinting that she herself may hold that secret. She is led away to face execution at dawn.

Some time later, the [Keith David] visits the cemetery and opens Ophelia’s grave.