More Grave Encounters

I’ll get right to the point – 2011’s Grave Encounters, a found footage “ghost” movie about a team of TV paranormal investigators spending the night in an abandoned mental health facility called “the most haunted building in America,” was cliched, inept, tedious and insulting. Other than that, I didn’t have a problem with the movie. So it makes sense there’s going to be a sequel.

Grave Encounters 2, arriving Halloween of 2012, picks up where GE left off, which as I recall, was some guy eating rodent sushi. Press release: “A group of film students who break into the hospital from the first film to do their own paranormal investigation and quickly realize that Grave Encounters was not just a movie…it was real.”

I just excited in my pants. [inset sarcasm HERE]

So this means all the things that were wrong about the first movie will get another chance to screw it up again. Just so I’m sayin’ it and not sprayin’ it, here were my complaints about Grave Encounters:

Cliched – a haunted abandoned mental hospital? Been there, spooked that, about 100 times.

Inept: Dialogue that real people wouldn’t utter while screaming and running from noises and unseen forces. Smacks of Blair Witch Project, which sucked fake paranormal ass.

Tedious: The scare set-ups were rank amateur; And to just follow the jerking camera as people scream, swear and run up and down dark corridors starved my brain of oxygen, the result of which was assembly line yawning.

Insulting: Figuring out the plot was going nowhere, the filmmakers, in the last five minutes, throw in everything but a cameo from Casper. The few second scene with ghost doctors experimenting on patients? What’s up with that? Besides being a photocopied premise (House on Haunted Hill/1999), there was no back story to explain it. The real surprise was that you didn’t see the push-pins they used to tack it on. [To read my full assessment, click HERE].

It may sound like it, but I didn’t hate Grave Encounters. More like I double disliked it. Part of the problem is I regard found footage films as annoying and lazy. Like karaoke and non-alcoholic beer, found footage has worn out its welcome. But hey, maybe Grave Encounters 2, with the unfortunate tag line (“Just when you thought it was over…”) will bring something new to the party. Doubtful; it hasn’t been released yet and you’ve already seen it.