10/4-Grave Encounters (2011)

Grave Encounters opens with a TV executive, Jerry Hartfield, explaining about a show they were producing, called Grave Encounters.  Hartfield tells the camera that this show was a reality show which followed a group of paranormal investigators as they explore haunted locations.  After five successful episodes, the show was cancelled due to what occurred during the filming of the sixth episode at an abandoned insane asylum.

"What you are about to see is not a movie," Hartfield explains, "this is the unaltered footage, simply cut from the over 76 hours of footage down to a feature length for airing."

This is something of a risky opening, as any movie that touts realism and/or based on a true story tends to be taken with a grain of salt.  But this movie manages suspend disbelief in the opening scene and really makes you think for a minute that this could be real.

One thing that helps this seeming realness is that Grave Encounters (the TV show) feels like every trashy ghost hunting show.  From the intro sequence: "I'm Lance Preston.  Ever since I lived in a haunted house as a child, I've dedicated my life to proving the existence of ghosts."  At first, Lance seems like he might actually believe in the paranormal, but after struggling to get a decent interview out of the gardener, we see Lance pay the gardener to say he's seen apparitions.

"One time, I saw a ghost"

From this early scene, as well as other actions such as laughing at the graffiti on the doors reading "death awaits,"  it becomes clear that Lance and his crew are not major believers, but rather in it for the money and fame.  This is epitomized after the crew finished filming a scene with Houston Grey, a medium who is brought in to help due to the size of the institution.  Grey has a particularly campy moment of medium hokum, and as soon as cut is yelled, the whole crew burst out laughing.  "Was that too much?" Houston asks while laughing.

It would have been too much, except he's wearing sunglasses inside, so it's okay.

The crew continues to explore the asylum, getting all the stock footage they need to edit the show, but failing to have any true paranormal experiences.  T.C., the cameraman, is alone filming transition shots when he gets a phone call, he sets the camera down and goes to take the call.  While on the phone he misses the wheelchair that was in the frame move seemingly of its own accord.  The door then slams on him and he freaks out to have experienced something supernatural.  After regrouping, the crew attempts to make contact with the entity and has several more increasingly aggressive encounters.

Major spoilers beyond

At this point, they agree that they have enough footage for the show and need to leave immediately.  The caretaker is late to unlock the chains on the door (which was there for added drama for the show), so they work to break open the door.  Once successful, they push the doors open to see not the outside, but more corridors.  Confused and thinking that they must not have actually been in the lobby, one notices the graffiti on the door, proving it was supposed to be to the outside.

Oh man was this a blow to the moral of both the characters and me as viewer.  Up to this point, all the supernatural occurrences were fairly minor, slamming doors, touching hair, but now the entire layout of the building is changing.  That's some major shit.  I mean, you gotta know it's basically hopeless at this point.  If whatever you're dealing with is powerful enough to keep changing the environment, you're pretty screwed.  Imagine a dungeon master who didn't plan a map and just keeps making up more corridors and rooms for you to explore.  That would suck.

But the crew doesn't lose hope!  They try to access the roof and leave via the fire escape, but that's a no go because when the find the roof access stairwell, the top floor is sealed off with a wall.  Remember the shitty dungeon master?  Throughout this time, they are being picked off.

Lance ends up alone in the service tunnels, slowly losing his mind due to the darkness the tunnel never ending.  At this point, he has been trapped in the institution for more than 72 hours.  He is seen eating rats for survival, and eventually finds the secret office of doctor who performed horrible experiments on the patients.  While looking at various pictures and occult objects, the spirits of the doctor and his nurses appear and lobotomize Lance.  The final shot is Lance doing his Grave Encounters sign-off, bleeding from the eye and clearly reduced in brain function.

Things I liked about this movie:
-Asylum setting.  I'm a sucker for these.  Mental hospitals give me the willies.
-Skeptics playing believers becoming believers.  I'd love to see a movie about a stage magician learning that magic is real.
-Well paced. First act establishes the TV show framework, second act builds suspense, and the third act makes you abandon hope.
-Doesn't overuse shaky cam.
-Ghost reveal was not disappointing.  Each specter is unique and scary in its own way.

Hello nightmares.

This is not necessarily a criticism of this movie in particular, but of the found footage genre in general.  For a genre that's called "found footage," we rarely see the how the footage is found.  In this movie, we never learn how Hartfield and his network received the film.  Did the caretaker find all the bodies and the equipment?  What happened? I don't know, it bugs me.  But again, that's a problem rampant in the genre, so I shouldn't rag on this film too much.

Rating on the Spook-o-meter: 6 out of 10 boos