Review: Grave Encounters (2011)

Grave Encounters (2011)

Not rated

Score: 4 out of 5

How did I sleep on this movie for as long as I did? I remember Grave Encounters, a Canadian found-footage ghost movie from 2011, getting a fair bit of attention when it came out, and since then it's helped to launch the career of filmmaker Colin Minihan, at the time working with Stuart Ortiz with the two of them credited as "the Vicious Brothers". I never bothered to seek it out, though, suspecting that it was just another movie trying to copy the success of Paranormal Activity while adding a faux-edgy flair around itself. I eventually found a DVD for dirt-cheap and decided to check it out and see what I'd been missing, and now I'm wondering why it took me so long to watch it, because I may have dismissed it way too soon. The premise, while done to death since, is still golden, and it's bolstered by a great leading man and some very creative scares, saving the in-your-face hauntings and jump scares for the third act and instead building suspense before then through more old-fashioned tricks and a general sense that something is wrong with the place the characters are trapped in. It successfully crafted a very unsettling atmosphere that boosted the scares when they did come and kept me awake and glued to the screen even as I was watching late at night and getting tired, and while I think it could've cut a bit deeper with its satire of reality TV, I did also enjoy the film's more lighthearted parody of "ghost hunting" shows and thought that it did a lot to build and establish the main characters. As a simple chiller, this movie shines.

The subject of the film is the lost and recovered tapes of the crew of Grave Encounters, a reality show in which they explore buildings reputed to be haunted and search for ghosts using advanced technology, in the manner of shows like Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. The host Lance Preston is a clear-cut parody of Ghost Adventures' host Zak Bagans, a very handsome and photogenic young man who hypes up the hauntings he expects to present to the show's viewers, complete with an overly dramatic opening credits sequence that not only introduces most of the cast but also lets us know exactly what this show is about. Of course, as the first act progresses, it becomes clear that this show is completely staged. In the five episodes they've filmed so far, they've never encountered a real ghost and have had to resort to camera trickery to create the illusion that ghosts are real, and at times, they go beyond just manipulative editing into outright faking things. Lance pays a skeptical groundskeeper at the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital where they're now filming episode six to claim that he saw a ghost, and the segments with the "psychic" Houston Grey are a lie from top to bottom, with Houston being an actor who has a nice laugh with Lance about his performance; as we see later in the film, he's actually the most skeptical about the supernatural out of all of them.

As somebody who's similarly skeptical and found that big wave of ghost-hunting reality shows annoying back in the day, I loved this. Horror movies about paranormal fakers getting karmic beatdowns from real ghosts are a dime a dozen these days, to the point that even recent Scooby-Doo cartoons have used the idea, but it was still fresh when this movie was made, and Minihan and Ortiz do a lot with it, particularly where Lance is concerned. The thing about Lance is that his interest in the supernatural is portrayed as more than just a cynical cash-grab to make the next hit for the Discovery Channel or TLC. It's indicated that he really does want to believe, and is profoundly disappointed that he and his crew have not encountered any real ghosts yet, such that, when evidence of paranormal activity does start cropping up, he gets genuinely excited at first even as his crew starts getting freaked out. There's undeniably a dash of cynicism and self-interest to him as well, especially with his belief that being the guy who proves, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the existence of ghosts is gonna make him a millionaire and a superstar. However, between the writing and Sean Rogerson's excellent performance, there are a lot more layers to Lance than just a greedy reality TV hack, layers that are slowly peeled back as everything starts to go wrong and he falls into a downward spiral. The rest of the cast too was solid all around, none of them blending together and all of them getting both development and a clear role to play, whether it's the "occult specialist" Sasha undergoing a meltdown as she realizes what a load of shit she and her co-workers have stepped in, the cameraman T.C. getting frustrated that he's not gonna be home with his wife, the phony psychic Houston trying to turn into a rationalist debunking the paranormal, or the technician Matt becoming the ghosts' personal chew toy.

As for its merits as a pure horror movie, Minihan and Ortiz were working on a microscopic budget (about $120,000), and as such, this film's scares are at their best when they're relying on old-school suspense building. Filmed at the closed-down Riverview Hospital outside Vancouver, they make excellent use of the building's dark corridors and frequently obstructed lines of sight. A lot of this is very familiar trickery for anyone who's watched a good found-footage movie, especially when the night vision comes into play, but it was done well here, making use of one of the more unique qualities of found footage in that the viewers can only see what the characters can see -- which does not include anything behind them. I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder just in case, and developing that particular sense of being watched that's a mark of a horror movie that's gotten me unsettled. Of particular note is that the film uses a lot more than just fog, distant banging noises, and shadows moving in the corner of your eye to establish that the hospital is haunted. It's quickly established that the hospital is playing around with time and space, as it remains night long after the sun should've risen while the corridors shift around in order to cause the protagonists to get lost and start running in circles. It felt less like being trapped in a normal haunted house and more like being trapped in Silent Hill when it's decided it doesn't like you. The setting itself felt alive and malevolent, creating a sensation that the show's crew was doomed the moment they decided to spend a night in the creepy abandoned asylum. The scares do eventually arrive in force in the third act, and while some of the effects did feel like off-the-shelf CGI, especially an overreliance on what looked like a "demon face" Snapchat filter for the ghosts, the atmosphere that had been built up by then meant that they still landed effectively, and it all led to a very satisfying and creepy conclusion that left a fair share of unanswered questions in just the right places.

If I were to find a real problem with the film, it would probably be the fact that, beyond Lance's story, a lot of the reality TV parody of the first act, which set this movie apart from many other found-footage films, fell by the wayside as it went on. I could have easily imagined interesting places that this film could've gone that would've deepened the satirical edge, in particular the wisdom of making campy reality shows exploiting real-life tragedies. A little line where a ghost manages to communicate with the team, telling them "hey, we died here, what the hell are you doing making entertainment out of what they did to us in this hospital?", or at least hoping that the crew can tell their story to the world and getting angry when they realize that they're gonna exploit it for ratings. While the body of the second and third acts was a very effective horror film, it felt somewhat unmoored from the satire of the early scenes where the viewer is shown how the sausage of a show like this is made normally. I liked what we got poking fun at ghost-hunting shows, but it felt like a meatier and more incisive film was lurking just under the surface.

The Bottom Line

It's a very entertaining thrill ride that could've cut deeper but still has a lot to say and laugh at, while serving up a very interesting protagonist, a creepy atmosphere that made the most of its low budget, and solid scares all around. Highly recommended for anyone who likes a good ghost story.