Film: Grave Encounters

Director: The Vicious Brothers
Genre: Horror 
Source: USA (2011)
Rating: Horror
Location/Format: Netflix Instant Watch
Grade: C

Perhaps it's because my horror picks this Halloween have been so terrible (not sure what I was thinking. I'm going to be correcting that soon with a few classics), but for whatever reason I enjoyed Grave Encounters a lot more than I expected to. The film manages to find a "found footage" conceit that actually makes a little sense, and it has some genuinely creepy moments that really work. It's strong enough that I can forgive the moments that really don't work (such as a night-vision Repulsion rip-off scene in which the walls grow hands). It's no horror classic, but it's one I wouldn't feel too ashamed recommending to a friend looking for a creepy ghost story.

The film centers around a "Ghost Hunters" type crew showing up to film a night in a supposedly haunted asylum. The characters spend the first thirty minutes cheesing it up in the way those paranormal investigator type shows always do--lots of "I've never seen anything like this" exclamations over nothing. And then, of course, things start to happen.

Grave Encounters knows what it's doing enough to not limit the strange events to one type of occurrence, but rather finds the asylum playing with the characters on all fronts: the building seems to rearrange itself at will, food spoils, time loses all meaning, sounds, and yes apparitions all take over, and there are some moments that really are surprising, even as there are plenty that are cheesy and predictable. 

Still, in a genre (found footage) that seemed to get old almost immediately, Grave Encounters manages not to feel just like a gimmick but rather uses the tropes of that style to tell an effective story. It may not be profound, but it is fun enough for a few Halloween scares.