Following a spree of popular found-footage horror movies, Grave Encounters(2011) tells the story of a group of paranormal investigators filming for a ghost-hunting show called, Grave Encounters. This movie is supposedly the footage found from when the team investigated a haunted asylum. They go in with much doubt as to whether or not this place is actually haunted, but come out of it discovering more than they ever wanted to.
When Grave Encounters begins, it starts off much with the tone of a black comedy, poking fun at the over dramatics of popular ghost-hunting TV shows like Ghost Adventures and Ghost Hunters. The first thirty minutes to an hour are enjoyable given the humor in them, especially to any fan of ghost-hunting TV shows. The host of the show, Lance Preston(Sean Rogerson), is clearly a dramatic play off of the overdramatic host of Ghost Adventures, Zak Bagans.
Throughout the beginning of the movie, the footage seems very typical of what one would find watching a paranormal investigation TV show. There are varying interviews explaining the history of the asylum, and various people’s own experiences with the hauntings. The humor comes in with a specific scene with a gardener where Lance tries to get him to tell about his paranormal experiences, only to find out the gardener is new. Then the team pays the gardener twenty bucks to make up a story. This shows in one simple scene that most of the team doesn’t really believe in hauntings, they’re just in it for the money, and that they’re willing to do whatever they need to make the show seem more interesting.
The brilliance of this movie starts to come in when the team starts to investigate the asylum. At first, it seems like they’re not getting much activity--maybe a few door creaks that turn out to just be rats. Very quickly, however, things start to change as the team starts to pack up, and discover that the ghosts in here aren’t only real, but very active. However, even when the ghostly activity starts to pick up, the horror element isn’t alive yet, given that the team was about to leave the building anyways. It’s only when they go to leave, and discover that the door left out of does not lead outside anymore, that the movie takes a very quick turn towards horror and not black comedy.
After this things only start to get progressively weirder and scarier. As the team searches around to try and find an escape, and members start to slowly disappear, they start to encounter very very real encounters. For me, it wasn’t very scary up until the first “real” jumpscare of the movie--a moment when a creepy girl turns around to reveal her demon face. I do know that others I’ve talked to have been genuinely scared at other various moments of the film, but for me this was the first moment where things went from a fun parody to creep city.
This moment was twice as scary because the movie so drastically changed. From this moment on, the scary factor just increased constantly until the very end of the film. The stakes were raised higher and higher, until the climax of the film gave a simultaneously satisfying and unsatisfying end.
The end felt like a cliffhanger, leaving the film without a nice tied up resolution, but at the same time it wrapped up the plotline of the film. The end is a clip of Lance speaking to a camera, saying that he got “better” and he can leave now. It leaves the audience wondering what happens to him afterwards, without ever letting us know. However, at the same time, it makes us feel like the film is over.
Overall, Grave Encounters is an exciting and innovative horror film that was overshadowed by the onslaught of “ghost-hunting” and found-footage style horror movies. I would suggest anyone to find this movie and see it for horror movies. It’s a unique horror movie that definitely delivers on both the scare and the humor factor without it overpowering the horror.
