Grave Encounters is a “found footage” horror movie about a reality TV series where three paranormal investigators visists historic haunted landmarks in the United States, like we’ve seen in “Ghost Hunters”, “Ghost Adventures” and numerous more of these shows that’s exploded in the recent ten years. But “Grave Encounters” was ahead of its time, according to what a producer tells us in the introduction before the movie starts. The film revolves around the sixth episode of “Grave Encounters” where the entire crew were to inspect an abondened haunted asylum where they disappeared and were never seen again. The only thing that was found was the 70-hour raw footage trimmed down to the last episode. And the producer that introduces us to the episode also tells us that what we’re about to watch is real, has not been tampered with, and just been edited strictly to cut down the time.
The movie also does not hesitate for a second to throw in some obvious satire on “Ghost Adventures”, which has become one of the most famous series in the genre. Grave Encounter’s host and producer Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson) can easily be seen as a parody of Zak Bagans with the same style of clothing, hairstyle and manic behavior. The crew also brings along a psychic, a dude that looks like a mix of Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop who must turn on his acting skills between the takes. The series has so far been a pure hoax with its five episodes, but after they get locked inside the mental hospital while camera gets rolling and shit starts to happen for real, they show their true colors and aren’t as tough as they seemed to be. Well, exept the host, Lance, who pushes the crew to keep the show going.
What makes Grave Encounters one of the much better found footage films is the realism, great acting, and steady narrative. They go from being characters in a fake series where everything is scripted, to obviously distressed and scared people when things begin to actually happen. It’s that “what-if” scenario that makes Grave Encounters stand out from the found footage-jungle out there. What if all of those paranormal investigators actually got a real up-close encounter with a ghost? Would they run away, or would they actually stay and get more out of it? Well, in this case we know the answer, but it’s a funny thing to think of when you see one of these shows in disbelief. Also filmed in a hospital where the narrow, dark corridors give a cool, isolating atmosphere, and overall a great tension that builds as a locomotive till the end.
Director: The Vicious Brothers
Country & year: Canada, 2011
Actors: Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryzko, Merwin Mondesir, Juan Riedinger, Shawn Macdonald, Mackenzie Gray
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1703199/
Tree Gelbman, a young college student, wakes up in a guy’s room, hungover as hell and barely no memory from last night. On top of it all, it’s her birthday today, a day she is not too fond of for reasons later revealed in the movie. She leaves the guy’s room with a pissy attitude, and we see pretty quickly that this is a girl that tends to make bad choices in her life, and treat people around her like crap. At the end of the day, she gets chased by someone wearing a mask, and ends up being killed. And then she wakes up in the guy’s room again, repeating the day all over again. In a desperate fight to reveal the identity of the killer, and try to figure out how to avoid being killed by him/her, she relives the day of her birthday and murder over and over…
Based on a novel from 2010 by famous horror-writer Stephen King, comes this Netflix original that was released on October 20th. It’s a story about Wilfred James, a proud farmer who conspires to murder his own wife when she wants them to move away from the farm and sell the land, which she owns because it was willed to her by her own father. Neither the father nor the son wants to move away from the quiet farmlife they’ve grown so attached to, and Wilfred convinces his son to participiate in the murder of his wife. After comitting the horrible act and dump the body of her into the well outside, Wilfred soon starts to experience that things do not go as smoothly from there on, even with his wife out of the way…
A father and a son who are running a coroner business from their own home, need to identify the body of a young woman who was found in a house full of brutally murdered bodies. The other bodies were that of the family living in the house…but in the basement, the police found the half-buried corpse of that young woman. The corpse is pristine, there isn’t even a scratch on her or any blood. As the old saying goes, however: looks can be deceiving…
«Ginger Snaps» is the story of two sisters, two outcasts that are obsessed with death. Their main hobby is to play around with practical effects and a photo camera, taking pictures of themselves playing dead. The sisters face a serious threat when Ginger, the oldest of them, is getting bitten by a creature resembling a werewolf, on the night she has her first menstrual period. Soon, Ginger’s behaviour and appearance starts to change, and Brigitte, the youngest of the two sisters, must try and help Ginger. But is there really any way to stop what is happening to her?
This is Eli Roth’s tribute to the cannibal genre, the horror subgenre that the italians started in the 70’s. Do I need to say more than classics like «Cannibal Holocaust» and «Cannibal Ferox» ? If this sounds completely unfamiliar to you, I guess it’s better for you to just take your hat and go. This is probably nothing for you and never will be.
«The Devil’s Candy» is an indie horror movie written and directed by Sean Byrne. I found out about this movie while watching some horror trailers on Youtube, and thought “an indie horror film that actually seem to have a high visual standard, and doesn’t look like it’s made out of 90% close-up shots? Let’s see what this is about”.
Edward Tor Swenson (Johan Rudebeck) is editing dull swedish drama-films that nobody wants to see. When the former editor in the building’s “Splatter and Gore Department” became mad and stuffed a grenade in his mouth, Ed is set up to replace him, a task he would quickly regret. Ed gets his own, dark house in the woods where he sits through the newest film in a horror movie series called “The Loose Limbs”, which serves as a parody of all of the trashy horror sequels we got in the 1980’s. Ed becomes increasingly influenced by all the cruel violence he must sit through and it drives him crazy, or drives him “Evil Ed”, if you will. Now the world shall pay for making these influential garbage films, and he goes on a wild rampage.
