The early and mid-2000s saw an explosion of two things: reality television and terrible horror movies. We’ll get to the horror movies in the next few reviews I have planned, but let’s briefly touch on how reality TV blossomed during this time. When the Hollywood writers’ strike of that era put a hold on traditional television and film entertainment, reality shows only became more prominent to fill in the blanks. Obviously, reality television has come a long way and become something disgustingly monstrous with dating shows like MILF Manor, but there were plenty of other genres that bloomed in the tidal wave of reality TV, including the ghost-hunting shows. One particular show is a clear inspiration for the movie Grave Encounters, which manages to capture the ridiculous nature of a particular show while being an entertaining found-footage thriller.

Pros

Entertainingly accurate to its slight mockery of Ghost Adventures
Decent moments in the opening and final acts
Some logical reasoning as to why everything is being recorded in the found footage style
Just slightly over 90 minutes

Cons

Dumb characters making dumb decisions
Scares are pretty weak
Overacting much?

Plot & Thoughts

The film opens with a producer talking about the show Grave Encounters and how it was going really well until the infamous sixth episode, at which point we cut to Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson), the host of the show. Lance and his crew are on the east coast of the United States at a dilapidated building that used to be an asylum, which is supposedly haunted by angry, vengeful ghosts. Lance and his team interview several “specialists,” as well as the unassuming groundskeeper and the gardener, looking for stories to hype up the spookiness of the location. It doesn’t matter if it’s the truth so long as it builds the mystique of the place, as far as Lance is concerned. After a tour of the grounds, the groundskeeper locks them inside, at their request, with the promise of returning to let them out the following morning. The crew then set up their cameras to capture any supernatural activity and start wandering the grounds. As you might expect, the team start to encounter some spooky shenanigans until they’re in a situation they might never escape.

I find that a fair amount of the enjoyment a person can get out of Grave Encounters comes from something in particular: how you feel about ghost-hunting reality shows and Ghost Adventures in particular. Personally, I think most are just cheap reality shows that use pseudoscience to justify their conclusions, which can be entertaining in their own right with the right hosts. Movies like Grave Encounters give me some extra satisfaction in watching the unprepared reality stars finally encounter what they’ve been hunting. If you are not like me, and you genuinely enjoy ghost-hunting reality shows as something real, there is still probably enjoyment to be had for similar reasons. If you happen to think that Zak Bagans and his terrible show Ghost Adventures are incredibly stupid, immature dribble on television, then Grave Encounters has a lot more to offer. The character of Lance Preston is very clearly inspired by Bagans and his style of hosting his show. Preston sports a black shirt, black hair, and an attitude that screams “arrogant jock.” The fact that the movie does its best to show him to be a non-believing jerk who just wants to grift the market so he can become rich and famous makes it all the more satisfying when he finally gets what he deserves.

When everything starts to hit the fan, the usual archetypes and tropes start coming out. The cameraman T.C. (Merwin Mondesir) gets overly aggressive towards everyone. Sasha (Ashleigh Gryzko) is the only believer of the group saying it’s likely angry spirits messing with them. Lance continues to deny everything and wants to get the best shot. And the false medium Houston (Mackenzie Gray) manages to be useless to the group other than as the verbal punching bag. Things start moving on their own, someone goes missing, and the exits either close off completely or lead to wrong paths that loop back around like labyrinths. Other than the obvious mockery of the ghostly adventurous Bagans, Grave Encounters does not do anything new, impressive, or scary to really set itself apart from other found-footage horror movies. That isn’t to say that the film is bad at what it does, because it’s a very competent movie. It’s good haunted house fun, but if you’ve seen other movies in this sub-genre of horror, you’re not likely to see anything here that blows your mind.

TL;DR

Grave Encounters is a mostly fun, simple found-footage horror movie that doesn’t do much to set itself apart from similar films. If you have watched various ghost-hunting reality shows, there’s more to glean from Grave Encounters in terms of the referential entertainment, but I doubt it’s going to take the place of your other favorite horror films. If you’re looking for a relatively short, fun, horror film, you could do far worse than Grave Encounters.

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