richard cavellero (rivertam26)

I can't wait to see this!

I wanna start this off first with a brief synopsis of the film and than my draw towards trhe material. "Grave Encounters" is supposedly the true footage of the first show that showed ghost hunting and how it was buried by the studio for obvious reasons after seeing it. The entire film is told from the found footage angle with a group of ghost hunters who decide to spend the night and hunt for ghosts in a spooky old mental hospital. Of course the place has a sordid history of mistreating the patients and the main doctor has a history of doing experimental brain procedures with them. And obviously it goes wrong otherwise there would be no film. Well, I'm a huge fan of the whole found footage film making approach but as I'm recently finding out Sometimes it doesn't work and a bad movie is just a bad movie. This is not a bad movie but it's not a very good one either. Also I'm a big fan of all the paranormal true story shows on TV they scare the crap out of me. The performances are decent if slightly annoying and there is not any real character development. Now some may say that you can't develop characters in this type of film but that is completely untrue. It's all about the way the film makers capture the source material and the performances they pull from their cast. Take for instance the original Blair Witch Project or (rec) compared to the recent cinematic attrocity The Devil Inside. Now I'd like to start with the positive and there is a decent amount. I did enjoy the film maker's approach to the material and I liked that the film really delivered on it's premise and showed a lot more than these types of films usually show. That being said the negatives are a little bit more prevalent. The film feels very stretched out in it's 91 min running time and mostly thats do to the fact that they just do too much with the material. A more simplistic approach with a focus on characterization and suspense would have benefitted it greatly. The performances are decent if a little uninspired. And quite honestly the film just feels a little generic. But they really have some good things going on. The film has a fair number of effective scares and the spfx are quite impressive especially for a film of this calibur. In the end Grave Encounters is worth a watch if you feel yourself drawn to this type of found footage films and are a fan of the paranormal programs on TV such as Paranormal State, the Haunting, Celebrity Ghost Stories, etc. If you don't find yourself drawn to any of that than I'd probably say avoid it like the plague, lol.