This Halloween, Have Some "Grave Encounters"

I'm not sure if this review will get to see the light of day yet, so I wanted to be sure that if it doesn't make it to the paper, you can at least read it here.  It's older, but still kinda relevant.

Movie Review: This Halloween, Have Some “Grave Encounters” (2011)

Ben Conniff, @thereelbennyc

Directed by The Vicious Brothers

Released by Tribeca Film

While assembling a queue of horror movies to watch over the course of the Halloween season, I received a suggestion from a friend back home to watch a movie called Grave Encounters.  He didn’t tell me anything about it, aside from the fact that he thought it was really scary.  With this lack of knowledge, I got on Netflix and decided to watch it.  I felt that the scares were nothing that Paranormal Activity hadn’t prepared me for, but Grave Encounters is still the scariest movie I’ve seen set inside a sanitarium. 

Alliteration aside, it seems that the idea of spending time in a house full of crazies, or lack thereof, is pretty terrifying.  A whole host of movies have been set in or around mental facilities.  I’ve seen Brad Anderson’s spooky Session 9, I’ve seen Milos Forman’s not-so-scary Oscar-winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and I’ve seen Martin Scorsese’s spine-tingling Shutter Island.  Grave Encounters, from aptly named directing team “The Vicious Brothers”, is still the scariest of them all.

Grave Encounters is a found-footage horror film about a team of paranormal investigators who visit an abandoned mental hospital, hoping to discover the facility’s spooky secrets for the purposes of their television show.  The hospital starts to look like a dud at first, but, as one would expect, the crew soon finds more than they bargain for. 

The film does take a few minutes to get going.  It’s not until the first half hour is up that things start getting intense.  It plays out like a cross between Paranormal Activity, Shutter Island, and an episode of Ghost Hunters.  The use of night-vision and handheld flashlights to film in the dark really contributed to the atmosphere of this film.  There is a sense of dread that permeates each frame, since the film is set entirely in the darkness of an abandoned, allegedly-haunted mental hospital.  Knowledge of those rumors, as well as the lack of a reliable light source, is enough cause for concern.  That’s what kept me on edge until the nerve-shredding scares started coming in the second half.  I jumped from my wooden desk chair multiple times at the end.

If you consider yourself a fan of the Paranormal Activity films, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, or the bevy of ghost-investigation shows on television, watch Grave Encounters this Halloween.  You’ll never think of your bathtub or your doctor the same way again.