Review

Lance Preston and his team from the "Grave Encounters" reality television show are out to prove the existence of the paranormal via spending nights in various haunted locations. Their sixth show involves the team, and a medium named Houston Grey, spending a night in the infamous Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital. The abandoned complex of buildings is apparently haunted with visitors to the site reporting strange noises, objects moving without physical explanation, and the odd sighting of ghosts in the darkened corridors. To spice things up Preston has the caretaker lock the team inside the spooky hospital with 6 am the deadline.

As night descends strange things start to happen, members of the team go missing, and the ghosts come out to play in malicious fashion. Worse for Preston and crew the hospital building itself seems to be coming alive with endless corridors, the exits blocked off, and any number of changes to the physical layout. Our Paranormal investigators are about to discover the secret of the Hospital and oh yes the Doctor is in and can see them now.

Before I'm much older I've got to mention that Grave Encounters is another in the seemingly never ending parade of "food footage" movies that are being rushed to our screens in the wake of the success of Paranormal Activity and the earlier The Blair Witch Project. For the most part the recent crop of footage flicks have been woefully inept but I guess we keep on watching them hoping for the next Paranormal Activity to emerge and take the box office by storm. Grave Encounters wasn't that movie but I still had a reasonable time with it despite the clear lifting of ideas from previous movies. At least the movie makers here are trying to tie in something different to the usual run of the mill outings.

The movie kicks off with Television Producer Jerry Hartfeld introducing episode six of Grave Encounters; sombrely informing us it's the last episode his company have received from Lance Preston and is being shown in complete uncut fashion. Anyone who has sat through movies like The Blair Witch Project already know it's not going to end well for Preston and his team, the question therefore becomes what happened to them.

Surprisingly a half decent movie that kind of kept my interest in a non threatening fashion

We then meet the meat, as we say in slasher circles, as the team arrive at the Hospital. Lance Preston it turns out is a hustler who will pay people to say they have experienced paranormal incidents. Now that pretty much ensures his demise sometime during the shenanigans we are sitting through. Along for the ride are cameraman TC Gibson, dude is black therefore limited life expectancy, Goth chick Sasha Parker, toast, technician Matt White, more fodder for the meat grinder, and fake medium Houston Gray who is so toast I'm surprised he didn't have a target on his forehead. As the group mill around the building getting location shots and filming the episode introduction a few details of the Hospital are disclosed. It's been closed for 50 years and one of the Doctors, Arthur Friedkin who had performed over 150 lobotomies on patients, was murdered by six inmates who escape their rooms one night. All in all not a nice place and pretty much a dumping ground for the insane and particular frothing at the mouth Fundos.

At this stage of the movie things were looking promising, though anyone with their horror-dar on is probably already picking up where things are going to go from here. Getting around the problems of everyone filming as the brown stuff hits the fan the Directors have Matt wandering around the Hospital setting up stationary remote control cameras in supposed paranormal hot spots. We still have a lot of hand held cameras but they have a tendency to get dropped as people get out of Dodge when the spooky stuff goes down. So full marks from me for the reasonably innovative use of cameras and the believable reactions of the characters as the chills go down, though Sasha screaming constantly was as irritating as Heather from Blair Witch. Any resemblance to camera use in the Paranormal Activity franchise is purely coincidence.

Director/Writers The Vicious Brothers show when the lights go down and darkness descends that they have a full handle on the haunted house genre. A window is recorded on a stationary cam opening all by itself and a wheel chair is caught moving on TC's camera, which he had put down and left running. If we all hadn't been Paranormal Activity aware these opening gambits might have worked better. The Directors then slowly escalate things, noises etc, as Goth Chick and Preston try to summon the spirits, which is sort of the paranormal equivalent of poking a wasp nest with a short stick. We finally do get to see a ghost, and there's one hell of a jump scare coming at you when we do. Before finally all hell literarily breaks out and the final shocker rushes at us. Throughout the Bros don't throw anything left field at their Audience, everything is foreshadowed with the script being as tight as a conservative Government's purse strings. Got to love a movie that slowly builds towards its target and keeps on giving for those after a few scares.

There's a few innovations in the movie that help raise it above the usual run of shaky cam outings that have nauseated audiences over the last few years. The Building changing topography like a demented and psychotic Hogwarts was a welcome addition, any resemblance to supernatural house remodelling in Rose Red was purely coincidence. I was also impressed with the characters waking up to find patient id tags on their wrists without any explanation. Though to be honest a few ideas are thrown on the spin cycle and then forgotten about, there were a number of ideas I would like to have seen developed further.

If I had to be brutally honest I would say the movie is simply fill of cheap jump scares, any resemblance to the opening scene in Day of the Dead is yadda yadda, though the Vicious Brothers do achieve a chilling atmosphere and I must admit some tension. I can also appreciate that no answers are given as to the nature of the Hospital or what might be lurking in its permanently dark corridors. But for anyone who has spent any time in horrordom there's a very "seen it before" feeling going down.

On the bright side of the lens the acting is actually superior to what we normally get in this sort of movie with everyone looking and sounding real rather than delivering self conscious performances. At no stage was I fooled into thinking I was watching a mockumentary, though reportedly some people apparently thought the movie was fair dinkum - harbour bridge for sale here, but I wasn't overly put off by this. Equally the normal cynicism over why people are still filming as the paranormal takes a huge bite out of them isn't an issue with this movie. End of day I'm saying a bit derivative but a fun ghost house ride nevertheless.

Grave Encounters was a film that slipped under my radar but I eventually became aware of the movie due to a Reader asking me to note down some thoughts on it. Yes I do requests where possible. I'm pleased I caught up with the movie as it delivered a lot more than I was expecting it too and I genuinely had chills running down my back as the movie grinded through its final block. I'm going to recommended this one to anyone who is cool with found footage outings with the proviso that there's not a lot you haven't seen already going down. Will definitely check out the sequel, The Vicious Brothers have a lot of raw talent in terms of structure and plotting, they are only going to get better as film makers. Missing this movie would be a grave mistake.