I love doing movie nights and lately I have been on a scary movie trip which happens to be one of my favourite genres. For the last few movie night at a friend’s place, we’ve been researching the internet to look for a good one. We Browsed critical and box office reviews, tweeted for suggestion and came up with a list of contenders. Thus begins our quest for the ultimate scary being that is yet to be watched!
Grave Encounters (2011)
Lance Preston and the crew of Grave Encounters, a ghost-hunting reality television show, are shooting an episode inside the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where unexplained phenomena has been reported for years. All in the name of good television, they voluntarily lock themselves inside the building for the night and begin a paranormal investigation, capturing everything on camera. They quickly realize that the building is more than just haunted – it is alive – and it has no intention of ever letting them leave. They find themselves lost in a labyrinth maze of endless hallways and corridors, terrorized by the ghosts of the former patients. They soon begin to question their own sanity, slipping deeper and deeper into the depths of madness, ultimately discovering the truth behind the hospital’s dark past…and taping what turns out to be their final episode.
Director: The Vicious Brothers
Writer: The Vicious Brothers
Stars: Sean Rogerson, Juan Riedinger and Ashleigh Gryzko
So we start our scary movie quest with grave encounters. As you’ve read the movie summary above, it’s clear that the film may have potential. Nightlight shot, Long spooky corridors, mad doctor conducting illegal experiments and haunts by deceased mental patients. Also the fact that the actors aren’t known helps fodder the goosebumps.
All prepared with two 16inch pizzas and lots of beverages, we sat in front of the television screen and started the film. The movie opens with a guy explaining the background of the video footage the movie was based on. So the plot was that a group of paranormal investigators set out to make a few episodes in different ‘haunted’ spaces. The 6th and final episode was the one with the actually haunting.
The spooks:
As mentioned previously, the fact that the actors were all unknown seemed to help us to believe that this could be a real story. Relativity t the characters definitely helps the movie to interesting. If you overlook the bad acting and just let yourself be carried along the film, you’re in for some old fashion jilts and jolts.
Being shot mostly on a night vision mode, the overall eerie feel of the film was maintained. The film had its share of shaky camera tricks and static background scores. Even the ghostly cries are sorted fitting and believable. But overall what really helps the mood of the film is that was shot in huge abandoned set ups there is a lot of echoes and empty noise. A huge empty mental asylum, ghostly cries and helpess victims makes you a scared rabbit.
One of my favourite moments in the film is the first haunting by a female inmate in one of the room. It came out of nowhere and in full magnitude. As the film continues there are several of those and each other having its own levels so screeches and shrill.
The first few minutes of the footage shown starts with what can only be described as bad acting. The investigating crew had all the clichéd characters staring from the enthusiastic host, the cute/goofball of a technician, the female counterpart and a supposedly mysterious but caricatured psychic. They go around doing their ground work by interviewing caretakers at the hospital and gardeners. Though ideally I guess the trick was to subtly scare us by building up curiosity about how spooky the hospital can get after dark. The interviews were punctured by bad acting and funny moments (especially the gardener refusing to admit that the place was haunted and cut to… he admits the moment he is handed some cash.)
Once locked in, there seems to be the usual spooking echos, night vision tricks that build up, but there is no gradual lift up to the main haunting. It just starts with a bang and accelerates to cliché scares. There seems to be too many scares rolled in one after the other. What ruins it for me there is too much stacked in too short a time. From poltergeist moving chairs to ghost of dead patients chasing the team around. The film packs atleast 10 different genres of haunting in a rough one hour time period. Even the sequence of the deaths in the film is predictable, funny guy dies first, the skeptic is tortured to the end. For scare-film amateurs, the film is spooky but for pros it can be a yawn.
Things to do:
- Dim lighting
- Duct tape spoiler guys in the room
- Duct tape friend who screams at anything
- Make sure phones on beepers…
- And don’t be a skeptic. Bear with the bad acting.
So this is film obviously is the scariest film yet to be watched, but overall it has a potential for a one time watch. And my quest still continues…
For their ghost hunting reality show, a production crew locks themselves inside an abandoned mental hospital that’s supposedly haunted – and it might prove to be all too true.