Which grave encounters is better

GiraffeDoor 17 March Though I sort of like the premise, this was ultimately a dud. I like the mystery element at the beginning but after the first act the whole picture is just one blur of screaming down dark corridors. I don't remember most of what happened in this movie. I did like the fact that it was connected to the first one, but that's about it. I think there were probably some jump scares. I don't know.

Some particular acts are just hard to follow - even if the original wasn't the best to begin with. Grave Encounters was an independent horror film that gained traction after having an interesting premise which was having a setting in an abandoned asylum. It did have a number of issues like hardly likable characters and continuity errors but on an entertainment level, it did have quite a bit of smaller thrills.

For one, its production design looked great and the mythology behind the asylum had a creepy factor that made it hard to resist. Surprisingly, it warranted this sequel which has a couple of areas that felt like it could've went somewhere.

However, the entirety of the story is much less believable. One key aspect that this sequel does maintain is continuity with the original. Thankfully, the script doesn't rehash everything but it's not enough either.

Now, viewers are introduced to a different group of filmmakers. Naive, unlikable and annoying teenagers. The "leader", if you want to call him that, Alex Wright Richard Harmon is a vlogger who reviewed the original Grave Encounters film and began doing research on it.

Soon he learns that the actual footage might be real and decides that he should go to the same asylum to confirm his hunch. This particular plot line is certainly no longer original, but what makes it even less effective is the build up to that particular plot point. The first third of the film spends its time getting its audience familiar with the characters before even getting to the asylum.

And by familiar, I mean understanding that none of these individuals are likable, have any type of development and act in some of the most despicable ways. The rest of the cast that joins Alex Wright are by no means more interesting than one another. There's one character named Trevor Thompson Dylan Playfair who is by far the most obnoxious and dimwitted of the group.

Right from the beginning, Trevor is portrayed as nothing else but a dummy. That's a great way to introduce our main cast. Richard Harmon as Alex Wright is nothing close to likable. He's just a geeky wannabe film director who goes looking for trouble. Does he do anything for anyone else in the running time?

Yeah, our protagonist everyone. The only plus there is for casting is having Lance Preston Sean Rogerson return. Even though from the first film he didn't give much charm, his character has far more than the rest in this movie. However, the real missed opportunity to this sequel was having the teenagers be even more prepared for the asylum.

There were actual parts that showed the teenagers devising a couple tricks to make sure they knew how to exit if necessary, but it wasn't for long.

Once set up, the play out isn't any different from the original, if not worse. You think if these kids really wanted to be prepared, they would've done nothing that was done in the original film. Plus, they have no excuse because in this particular universe, the main characters also saw the movie. Horror wise, there's nothing to be creeped out about now. The mythology behind the asylum is dropped which is a big reason to why this claim is made. To begin with, the asylum was already explained in the original so there's nothing the audience hasn't seen.

Next is the lack of tension, for this entry, the new director wastes no time diving into its blatant jump scares and recycled ghouls.

There's only one scene where something new is done and that's some specter having an agenda. This is only revealed much later on.

The violence is probably on the same level as the last but it's not effective enough to create any scares. However, like the original there are a few twists. Unfortunately the twists aren't as effective either because of their lack of physical knowledge. There are some points in the running time that are done differently from that of the original but that's not saying a whole lot.

The characters are even less likable than the last batch and the tension barely exists. It could've gone somewhere but its poorly written script did not permit that. Ugh why can't they make a good horror film anymore?

I feel like has been the death of horror. It was for the most part creepy and had a unique inspired idea that by the films overlong and confusing conclusion they had run into the ground.

All of those films mistakes have been intensified in this pseudo sequel following further into the weirdness with very little explanation. Sure the movie has some decent unearned jolts but most of the these films problems lie in their ultimate execution.

Much more evident in this entry it just never feels believable despite an inspired nod towards a bigger more satisfying premise. It features truly horrendous and very annoying performances from it's cast, uninspired camera work and a silly contrived climax that goes absolutely nowhere. And worst of the all for most of the films running time it's just plain boring. I feel a lot more happened in the original than in this one and thats not saying much.

A better film would have me questioning if I should be writing a review bashing this film but what lies here is a sad, boring genre sequel that exploits the worst traits of this new stupefying subgenre of found footage films.

Please stop just as the lead asks in the film where are all the Cravens and Carpenter's of this generation, well they certainly weren't involved in the making of this cinematic atrocity. PsychoBeard 5 August There is nothing redeeming about this film. Nothing at all. Grave Encounters 2 is about a group of five film students who decide to follow up on the events of the first film, mainly due to one of the group member's persistence in finding out if the events of Grave Encounters were real or not.

To their horror, not long after entering Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, they soon find out that the events that happened there before were very real. This installment is really nothing like the first one in being that it is supposed to be filmed like a documentary and have you actually believe that these are real people documenting real events.

The first one did this successfully, but this one had the opposite effect and is a bit like three separate movies put together. The first 35 minutes is like some kind of crap frat party film with the students getting high and getting drunk. The next 30 minutes, when they get to the asylum and set up their camera gear, there is not much build up to events The last third of the movie is where it just goes so ridiculously over-the-top it feels as if you're actually watching a Hollywood horror movie instead of a "documentary".

Any credibility it had of being a "documentary" before this is completely tossed out. Grave Encounters 2 only JUST scraped a "decent" rating for me purely because of the scares that are in the middle of the movie when the students are moving through the asylum to look for paranormal activity. If it wasn't for those moments then the movie would have completely bombed. Overall it was OK, but it is nowhere near as good as the first one.

Very disappointing. RevRonster 9 January I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed "Grave Encounters. The story was intriguing, the acting was good and the setting was creepy. The acting is good but a lot of the characters lack depth or even have development whatsoever. The story starts great and builds off the first one well but ends up getting too ridiculous and silly at the end. The film adds in more ghost activity and scares but these sequences seem to follow a very specific formula and it makes the scary parts feel repetitive and tiresome.

However, Sean Rogerson returns from the first one and he is really giving off a tremendous performance that begs the question of why he isn't a big star. It works in places and doesn't work in others. The crew ventures out to the Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, a decrepit sanctuary that was once home to many mentally-diseased prisoners in the 's - 40's. They agree that, after shooting local gardeners and affiliates with the building during the daytime, they'll scope out the building's interior for "ghost hotspots" IE: a window that is known to open by itself and set up cameras to hopefully catch present paranormal activity.

The plan also calls for staying overnight in the psychiatric hospital, which they treat as something completely trivial. Time passes rapidly for them. At first, the place seems "no more haunted than a sock-drawer," Preston says, but gradually becomes more eerie. Doors start closing, loud screams can't be heard, things begin falling, and then this escalates to exits not being where they once were and hallways seemingly turning up where the front door used to lie.

The institution was erected with a prison in mind, meaning all the windows have bars on them, making escape impossible. Their food supply is eventually contaminated, their light diminishes, and so on, making the stay haunting and emotionally testing on the entire camera crew.

Grave Encounters' strongest badge is it doesn't suffer from the choppiness so many films of the found footage genre do. Directors, gimmickly named "The Vicious Brothers," manage to keep a steady grip on the way the film flows in terms of cohesion and pacing.

Even when the madness begins to take a front-row seat, the film never becomes incomprehensible or too dark and dingy to allow itself to be deciphered. I'm also a fan of how the film manages to keep its tone serious, and delightfully refrains from the unnecessary, self-referential attitude that sometimes feels oppressively common in horror films. Never did I get the feeling one of the film's goals was to satirize or spoof paranormal reality shows.

It keeps its agenda alert and its material formal, even when it has the uncanny ability to offer throwaway subjectivity on the topical issue of paranormal TV. At ninety four minutes, it's hard to say length is a big issue, as well. There are times at the end when the film's style and situational drama become a muchness affair, yet I was already so stunned and satisfied at the competence already brought forth in the picture.

Grave Encounters offers and engaging style and believable content - so believable that it's a bit of a turn off to see "Directed by: The Vicious Brothers" at the end for more than one reason. Directed by: The Vicious Brothers.

I hear there's plenty of 'ghost-hunting' shows on cable TV stations these days I can't name any, because I deliberately don't watch them, but I hear there's a fair few. Grave Encounters is a kind of Blair Witch Project set in a lunatic asylum. A documentary film crew go there to continue making a series of ghost-hunting programmes, only to find - guess what - they get locked in and find that there's something really real there after all surprise!

If you liked Blair Witch, or Cloverfield, or any movie filmed entirely on hand-held camera, then you might like this. It's not bad. Like the others in its genre, it's well-acted. You can believe that the cast are really getting freaked out. The first half of the film is basically scene-setting - not many scares. Then it picks up in the second half with plenty of screaming into the camera and shaky footage of something nasty, lurking in the shadows ready to make you jump.

Like I say, if you're into these sorts of films, you'll probably enjoy it - it's certainly not at the bottom of the pile when it comes to these sorts of 'mock reality' films. I just found myself thinking that I'd seen all this before, just set in a wood somewhere. At least there are no close-up shots of noses running. These ghostbusters must have packed enough Kleenex. But as the night progresses, they discover that the building is more than just haunted and encounter much more than they bargained for.

Editing provides a good pace to the story but the change in direction that its plot later undergoes was uncalled for. As for the performances, the cast plays their part well but none of them ever manage to stand out. On an overall scale, Grave Encounters delivers some good scares and keeps them coming throughout its runtime but even though some of those frightening moments are downright chilling, they still carry a tone of familiarity, for it's something that most horror aficionados have encountered before.

Not a bad start to their filmmaking career, The Vicious Brothers' directorial debut does get many things right but just not enough to set itself apart from the norm. Caputo should love this. This is so far the best camcorder horror-film that I've seen. I don't remember what those "one or two others" were, because each and every movie from this sub-genre is so bloody memorable.

Usually, I'd be foaming at the mouth, ripping a film to pieces for being that slow I do generally prefer speed and expediency when it comes to horror flicks , but GE wasn't dull during its lengthy introduction; I enjoyed its cynical portrayal of various phony-baloney dumbing-the-masses-down "reality" TV shows that are all the rage on certain pseudo-documentary channels won't mention any names Discovery Channel.

It is somewhat unusual for a horror flick to include segments that mock psychics and other wasteful product of that sort; Huston is portrayed as an all-out fraud, which is refreshing, and his death is perhaps the most violent of all the ghost-fodder in GE - and that's the film-makers telling us something. Usually, having sex in a horror film - or being cocky - are the unforgivable offenses that carry the death penalty with them, in slasher films especially, but this time around a psychic represents the pinnacle of what's kill-worthy.

Therese Caputo, you "Loang Island Medium" scab, you're next! Once again, how scary GE is depends entirely on how many horror films you'd seen i. For newbies, this will undoubtedly be eerie and frightening, but for people who'd seen hundreds of ghost flicks GE should be fun, interesting though not particularly sweat-inducing. The idea of an abandoned mental hospital in a horror setting is far from original, but ghosts that apparently manipulate time and space, hence keeping their human fodder indoors indefinitely, is a fairly original concept or at least quite rare.

Greetings from Lithuania. This phrase stuck with me till the end of this very good horror movie. I won't repeat the plot, although it's not the most original one.

What makes this movie really work i think is acting, script and directing. Actors that i have not been previously heard about actually did an amazing job in this low budget movie. I absolutely recommend this movie to anyone who loves good scares. The additional under the table transaction scene is one of the low points of the movie, an overly manipulative effort to capture the authentic ambiance of real TV drama.

A good example where more is definitely not better as it diminished and created so much disbelief as turn the movie into parody of itself. The inclusion of an over-the-top psychic character as presented even as the well-meaning and intriguingly creative defeated the Blair Witch Project premise that made it so well received and scary. In an effort to simulate the authentic realism that was attempted in Cloverfield with the same but even worse cheesy impact the Grave Encounter director excessively over-used and manipulative incorporated so performed "real" amateur video recording flubs that only distracted, intruded on the eventual attempt at a serious horror movie.

The movie's dialogue seems very scripted and at times corny as when the lead character asks any spirits "to make a noise, tap on something" as opposed to "make your self known," as most of the movie came across pretty lame for a quality real live grave encounters show with this dialogue sounding a person talking to a demented person or a 3 year old toddler. There are moments which aren't edited well even with the premise that the movie was taken from rough cuts and only serves to suggest the false acting behind the performances in this movie, further blurring line between reality and fiction which then gets in the way of the movie itself.

The behavior on screen by Grave Encounter's characters come off as incredibly weird and strange as if they had never had previous strange encounters ever before even though this what they did. The basic movie's set-up, script, dialogue and acting are at odds with each other and creating unbelievable performances. Of the strengths of the movie is the script's having the characters process making decent realistic decisions at times.

Yet even photographically speaking, the audience is presented a screen movie view from the narrow circular videocam view that doesn't seem was is usually observed with real videocameras and only serves to remind one that perhaps its use was only as a claustrophobic photographic gimmick. Even with the special effects, Paranormal Activity was able to maintain a sense of authenticity in its production, while boring in places as real reality is, it incorporated some photographic effects that had more emotive and creepy impact than the more simple and subtle effects than found in Grave Encounters.

Although half way through the movie there are two nice creepy twists they can't make up for the lost suspenseful tension that hasn't been built up to this point while movie continues with a "telegraphed" surprise. The last 30 minutes of the movie, ironically does seem to become more appealing or fascinating with its descent into madness included scenes with mixed results while being rather creative resemble the gross out attempts using the Hellraiser motif.

Yet by the end, there doesn't seem anything special about the movie to note. The suspenseful novelty and brilliant impact of the Blair Witch Project really seems to have run its course as more of the same, will not usually satisfy the voracious appetite without the careful and selective use of cinematic quality incorporated with a script that is enhanced by the director's vision instead of mere copying or mimicking for its own sake.

By time the real build up occurs it just seems like another attempt at pushing the Blair Witch Project button. However in actuality, Blair Witch Project never really used or had to even specifically introduce any of the typical horror scenes to create its impact. While Grave Encounters' supporters have argued that the excessive borrowing was a non-issue, the real problems of this movie appear to be its inability to effectively use past horror cinematography techniques and failure to borrow from other great movies of other genres that may have really greatly propped up this movie and its possibly decent script.

For example with the maze of building, another comparative movie almost spellbinds its audience with its design setting as a period drama mystery-thriller, The Name of the Rose The use of night-photography or cameras was put to great but limited use in the climatic ending of The Silence of the Lambs Other more traditionally shot horror movies have better cinematic impact include: Thir13en Ghosts ; House on Haunted Hill ; Return to House on Haunted Hill , Dark Water , and Even Silent Hill had a number of similar cinematic but more powerful effects as Grave Encounters but presented them in a deliberate dramatic horror feature film format.

As for authentic realism there are great examples in other movie genres of how such an effective theatrical approach can be as found in My Date With Drew , Unreal.

There is a date, low-budget sci-fi movie, Idaho Transfer shot not in real TV format, but still incorporates some of the basic elements of simple photography, basic low production values and even still retains a viable narrative and compelling psychological interest to the very end, which even with the relatively same production values almost a 40 years later, Grave Encounters does not sustain its emotive energy.

Instead, the movie comes off as parody of itself. Eric Kohn. The title refers to a cheap TV series hosted by lifelong ghost lover Lance Preston Sean Rogerson , whose fabricated claims of discovering otherworldly beings have kept the network happy.

Confidently addressing the camera about the invisible creepy things potentially surrounding him, Lance drops facade between takes, noting that they can always fake it if nothing happens. Obviously, something does. Like Human Centipede 2 or Book of Shadows: Blair Witch before it, this is a horror follow-up that's deeply enthralled with its own mythology. The problem with this is that not a great deal of people actually saw Grave Encounters — and even fewer care about its mythology — which means that everything needs to be spelled out laboriously.

This makes for one of the more fascinating trailers of the year. Let me break down the Grave Encounters 2 trailer for you. In case you missed it, Grave Encounters was basically Paranormal Activity, but with more surprised pandas. Up to speed? The point of this is to make you believe that Grave Encounters was a very important movie.

What if Grave Encounters wasn't just a movie?