So here we are with Grave
Encounters, which follows a group of television ghost
hunters attempting to contact the spirit world within a supposedly haunted
former mental institution.
The set-up is sound. We have a group of con men and women
who basically play up to the camera for their popular television show, and
through the unedited footage we learn about their behind-the-scenes
personalities before all the crazy shit goes down. These characters think they
are just in another location made scary via rumors and hearsay, but the
institution is genuinely haunted and they find they are ill prepared for what
lies in store for them.
The problem lies within the execution of the sub-genre’s
clichés and the writing of the characters/improvisations of the actors.
Basically, if you’ve seen any found footage movie in the vein of Paranormal Activity you’ve seen all this
flick has to offer. It follows that model verbatim – get to know the
characters, (attempt and fail to) build up tension, have a minor “boo” scare
and repeat in 5 minute increments ad nauseum.
The small cast of actors seem capable of pulling off their
“on screen” personas while shooting for their television reality show, but once
they drop the façade and show their true selves is where the movie begins to
get tedious and hokey. They turn into stereotypical whiners who do nothing but
curse at each other and scream. Would that be a normal reaction if you were in
that type of a situation? Sure. My issue is that there is no way to
differentiate one character from the next since they all act in the same way.
But the performances are a minor blip on the radar of this
film’s sins. I have a large gripe with the way the cameras are used throughout
the flick and how they telegraph the non-existent scares just by their framing.
For instance, a couple of characters need to crack open the doors to an
elevator to get to the lower levels of the hospital. The only person with any
sort of strength is the guy holding the camera, so he walks at least twenty
steps away to place the camera on the floor. Why? It wasn’t because of the
light attached to the top since another character was holding a flashlight she
was using to illuminate the room. It was because the director needed to get a
wide shot, plain and simple. It’s stuff like that which takes me completely out
of the movie because it breaks the illusion that these characters are fighting
for their lives instead of making a movie. One character backs up against a
door with a small window on it, so the person filming takes a few steps back to
show not only the actor, but the door and the window in center frame so that
the hand that bursts through it a few moments later is visible in full. The
scares don’t feel organic. They feel like a choreographed fight scene from an
old Jackie Chan flick.
Writers/directors The Vicious Brothers’ (Collin Minihan and
Stuart Ortiz) made a blatant rip-off of The
Blair Witch Project mixed with Paranormal
Activity. Every beat, every plot development… even the ending. There is
nothing original here to differentiate itself from the myriad of other crappy
movies of this ilk and they don’t seem to care either. They pooped out a low
budget movie that apparently was quite successful on home video. As far as I
can tell their only reason for making this movie was that it was cheap to
produce, took little effort in post-production and therefore would turn a tidy
profit once released into Redboxes across America.
As this flick spun on I felt like I was watching a film
purely bred to launch a franchise as viable as Paranormal Activity. Turns out I was right since a sequel came out
a year later and there are rumors of a third. Grave Encounters is as by the numbers as you can possibly get. It’s
predictable in the extreme, lazily executed and just flat out boring. Skip it.
0.5 out of 5
p.s. Naturally once this flick ended I watched the sequel.
Like I said… a glutton for punishment.
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