As is the case with anything that becomes wildly popular the minute it comes out, the found footage boom of the Aughts (which sprang from the game-changing release of The Blair Witch Project in 1999) would eventually get overdone to the point of exhaustion. After audiences got their senses shook and shattered by the likes of the original REC (2007), Cloverfield (2008), and Paranormal Activity (2009), subsequent found footage movies were faced with the fact that standards and expectations had already been set quite high. From then on, good found footage movies became the exception, not the norm.
In the midst of this, we get a low budget found footage movie titled Grave Encounters, directed by Canadian filmmakers The Vicious Brothers (Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz). Released in 2011, the movie managed to become a modest box office hit after raking in some five million dollars out of a $120,000 budget. It found a way to connect with audiences by tapping into another pop culture phenomenon that was taking over the collective imagination: paranormal TV, another staple of the 2000s (as shows like Ghost Hunters and A Haunting can attest to).
Grave Encounters follows a group of paranormal researchers hoping to make it big with a ghost show of their own (the titular Grave Encounters) as they land on the perfect spot: the Collingswood Psychiatric Hospital. The place has a dark history of patient abuse that led to multiple deaths and botched lobotomies. The crew decide to spend the night there to capture anything ghostly, and they get it in the worst possible way.
Story-wise, there’s very little that’s unique or groundbreaking here. It really is as simple as people making bad choices because they don’t respect the myths and warnings surrounding the location, and then paying for it. What makes it special is the quality of the scares. The haunting starts with the intensity on high, and it never comes down. Things crash with a resounding force, people get thrown around with a sense of anger that’s palpably violent, and ghosts look demonic with their dead white eyes and black lips.
The horror sequences really do save the movie. As terrifying as it is, you always want to see what other terrors it has up its sleeve. It’s easy to appreciate the craft. Pulling off good jump scares is more of an art than people give it credit for. Give Grave Encounters a watch and honor the work that went into scaring you with a scream or two.
