As this is my first review on this site I beg the reader's indulgence, even if I can't bring myself to do this movie the same favor. Because "Grave Encounters" (2011) unfortunately stands out for all the wrong reasons.
The setting itself seems promising at first; a camera team recording a reality show about ghost hunters during a night in an abandoned mental hospital, only to find more proof of the afterlife than they bargained for - a fine setting for any horror movie or video game. Disregarding the painfully obvious intro, with a producer who comments on the found material and even giving a looking-directly-into-the-camera assurance of the veracity of said recordings, the problems of this flick begin almost immediately. The stiff, unconvincing and decidedly "unrealistic" acting of the main characters, members of a freelance reality show group called "Grave Encounters", is only partially offset by the constant change in perspective from the "authentic behind the scenes" footage and the "part of the TV show" footage. This effect does present some entertaining details, such as the presenter of the show being a fame chasing non- believer and the crew trying to bribe a random gardener into claiming haven seen a real ghost, and it goes someway to excuse the presenter character, who has to switch constantly between being himself and the overly dramatic ghost chaser persona. But soon after, during the day time tour of the site, the dialogue starts to falter and the forced acting turns out to be less of an ironic statement and more of an impeding condition for the movie itself.
Now, I have seen many a horror movie that suffers the same acting and scripting issues as mentioned, but that are nevertheless enjoyable for some reason. Some have amateurish but ambitious effects, others have loads of self irony. Some have fantastic CGI creatures others have papier mâché puppets on strings and are more funny than scary. Some are drawn out master pieces of suspense and some explosive and action packed originals. This movie has none of the above.
I know one cannot invent the proverbial wheel all the time, but this movie is one of the most cliché ridden and poorly executed examples of a failed spin off in recent times. I still haven't gotten over the fact, for instance, that the supposed original footage is interlaced with archive material showing some very unconvincing "actual footage" from the 1930s, even if the "executive producer" just told us, that the found material has only been edited for time. I find the entire premise of the stationary camera / documentary style is being violated, when the unmanned cameras pan and zoom in on the creepy window opening by itself. Likewise, when the character puts down his camera in a panicked frenzy and subsequently puts down and slightly adjusts a portable spotlight to illuminate the exact spot he's going to, any amount of tension inherent in the scene evaporates like the ghostbusters-green "ectoplasmic residue" that shows up under the UV lamps in an earlier scene.
Having forfeited not only script and acting quality, but also stylistic integrity, the hope for this movie then seems to ride on either originality, chilling effects and/or a well thought out ending. With respect to originality I can safely say that there is absolutely nothing here that hasn't been seen before, even if the combination of scares and effects is equally novel and puzzling. Without giving away the ending, or even too much of the plot, I might warn potential viewers to expect a bewildering mixture of demonic possession, digital camera glitches and pixel errors, black eyes, white eyes, meat hooks (!), bloodstained altars, runic writing(!?!) and the to be expected doctor, conducting human experiments. The sheer amount of potentially interesting ideas crammed into one flick is so overwhelming, that if the previous grievances and clumsy teen-slasher-boom-noise-scares haven't given you a headache yet, trying to make sense of the back story certainly will.
The CG effects are thankfully few and far between, consisting largely of raccoon-eye makeup and contact lenses combined with the overextended gaping mouth, screaming with a demonic voice. As such this works alright, particularly the second time around, but again the application seems random and unnecessary; an empty room suddenly containing a lone, shuddering figure in a hospital gown with its back turned should be scary enough without having to resort to relatively cheap and seen before tricks like this.
If all this negativity hasn't scared you away yet, and you are hell bent on watching this movie, you deserve to do so without me droning on about the ending. Suffice it to say, that it's better than I feared it would be. Whether you'll find it good enough to redeem the previous 1½ hrs of waste of time (I honestly could not believe my eyes when I looked at the time and saw just 50 minutes had passed) I can't say, but my final opinion would be this: If you want a good documentary style horror movie watch "The Blair Witch Project", "Paranormal Activity" 1 or 2 or "REC"/"Quarantine". If you have done so already, chances are that "Grave Encounters" will do nothing good for you.
The setting itself seems promising at first; a camera team recording a reality show about ghost hunters during a night in an abandoned mental hospital, only to find more proof of the afterlife than they bargained for - a fine setting for any horror movie or video game. Disregarding the painfully obvious intro, with a producer who comments on the found material and even giving a looking-directly-into-the-camera assurance of the veracity of said recordings, the problems of this flick begin almost immediately. The stiff, unconvincing and decidedly "unrealistic" acting of the main characters, members of a freelance reality show group called "Grave Encounters", is only partially offset by the constant change in perspective from the "authentic behind the scenes" footage and the "part of the TV show" footage. This effect does present some entertaining details, such as the presenter of the show being a fame chasing non- believer and the crew trying to bribe a random gardener into claiming haven seen a real ghost, and it goes someway to excuse the presenter character, who has to switch constantly between being himself and the overly dramatic ghost chaser persona. But soon after, during the day time tour of the site, the dialogue starts to falter and the forced acting turns out to be less of an ironic statement and more of an impeding condition for the movie itself.
Now, I have seen many a horror movie that suffers the same acting and scripting issues as mentioned, but that are nevertheless enjoyable for some reason. Some have amateurish but ambitious effects, others have loads of self irony. Some have fantastic CGI creatures others have papier mâché puppets on strings and are more funny than scary. Some are drawn out master pieces of suspense and some explosive and action packed originals. This movie has none of the above.
I know one cannot invent the proverbial wheel all the time, but this movie is one of the most cliché ridden and poorly executed examples of a failed spin off in recent times. I still haven't gotten over the fact, for instance, that the supposed original footage is interlaced with archive material showing some very unconvincing "actual footage" from the 1930s, even if the "executive producer" just told us, that the found material has only been edited for time. I find the entire premise of the stationary camera / documentary style is being violated, when the unmanned cameras pan and zoom in on the creepy window opening by itself. Likewise, when the character puts down his camera in a panicked frenzy and subsequently puts down and slightly adjusts a portable spotlight to illuminate the exact spot he's going to, any amount of tension inherent in the scene evaporates like the ghostbusters-green "ectoplasmic residue" that shows up under the UV lamps in an earlier scene.
Having forfeited not only script and acting quality, but also stylistic integrity, the hope for this movie then seems to ride on either originality, chilling effects and/or a well thought out ending. With respect to originality I can safely say that there is absolutely nothing here that hasn't been seen before, even if the combination of scares and effects is equally novel and puzzling. Without giving away the ending, or even too much of the plot, I might warn potential viewers to expect a bewildering mixture of demonic possession, digital camera glitches and pixel errors, black eyes, white eyes, meat hooks (!), bloodstained altars, runic writing(!?!) and the to be expected doctor, conducting human experiments. The sheer amount of potentially interesting ideas crammed into one flick is so overwhelming, that if the previous grievances and clumsy teen-slasher-boom-noise-scares haven't given you a headache yet, trying to make sense of the back story certainly will.
The CG effects are thankfully few and far between, consisting largely of raccoon-eye makeup and contact lenses combined with the overextended gaping mouth, screaming with a demonic voice. As such this works alright, particularly the second time around, but again the application seems random and unnecessary; an empty room suddenly containing a lone, shuddering figure in a hospital gown with its back turned should be scary enough without having to resort to relatively cheap and seen before tricks like this.
If all this negativity hasn't scared you away yet, and you are hell bent on watching this movie, you deserve to do so without me droning on about the ending. Suffice it to say, that it's better than I feared it would be. Whether you'll find it good enough to redeem the previous 1½ hrs of waste of time (I honestly could not believe my eyes when I looked at the time and saw just 50 minutes had passed) I can't say, but my final opinion would be this: If you want a good documentary style horror movie watch "The Blair Witch Project", "Paranormal Activity" 1 or 2 or "REC"/"Quarantine". If you have done so already, chances are that "Grave Encounters" will do nothing good for you.