Unquiet Graves: True Crime and Bad Times

By Jack Pengelly

Poster for Unquiet Graves by Seán Murray

These days, few topics have the power to capture the attention of the film-going public like true crime. If a film or TV series seems to be dominating the discourse, odds are the main character is either a superhero or a serial killer. One might then imagine that a film documenting a decade-long killing spree that claimed the lives of over 100 civilians would have the potential to be the next Making a Murderer-size hit – you’d be wrong, unfortunately, but an apparent lack of commercial appeal has no effect on the power of Seán Murray’s Unquiet Graves.

Graves is an investigative look into the Glenanne Gang – a group whose members included active RUC officers – and their operations during 1970s where they have been linked to 120 deaths of Irish civilians. The film doesn’t spend too much time explaining the situation of Troubles-era Northern Ireland, trusting the audience to be familiar with this blood-soaked chapter of the country’s history. Murray makes no attempt to craft a definitive overview of the conflict, instead making the decision to focus in on the actions of one specific group and the people whose lives were irreparably affected.

Some may take issue with this more subjective approach, but I feel that it works in the film’s favour. A comprehensive overview of the conflict would be an exhausting undertaking, and that’s without even considering making it work as an engaging film. Graves’ target is singular and such focus allows the film to draw the viewer in.

It took a while for me to properly connect to the film. My initial feelings as I was watching it were that it’s no-frills approach – the film is mostly made up of talking heads and archive footage, with some sporadic re-enactments – was a bit dry, and a lack of any visual flair would be a stumbling block for my engagement with it.

As it turned out, this concern was misplaced; Murray’s journalistic approach to the film is one of its biggest strengths. The testimonials that form the spine of the film – a mix of investigators, journalists, survivors, and even one of the men who performed these crimes – only become more engaging as the audience is drip-fed information, coming to the same startling conclusions that the men and women who talk us through their research.

While these days it feels that not a week passes without a new 10-part true crime series becoming the talk of Twitter, with Unquiet Graves Murray has condensed a season’s worth of revelations into a tight 75-minute film – with each one more unsettling than the last.

For many young Northern Irish people, it’s hard to properly comprehend the Troubles. We all hear an abridged version of events from family and whichever community fate chucked us into, but the reality of our country’s sordid history is hazy. Unquiet Graves does not illuminate it all with piercing clarity – I don’t know if any film could – but it casts some light. It tells the story of people whose lives were cut short because of the town they were born in, because of who they were married to, of the men who felt it was right to take those lives. It isn’t the whole story, but it is theirs.