22.
Grave Encounters (Netflix Instant)
When
Grave Encounters explained that it was real recovered footage from a television crew's ill-fated trip to Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, I thought of the recent
Asylum Jam, a recent game jam where video game designers were tasked with creating horror games that do not use "asylums, psychiatric institutes, medical professionals, violent/antipathic/'insane' patients as settings or triggers." (You can see some of the games that game out of Asylum Jam at
Giant Bomb.)
Grave Encounters plays with the same haunted house ideas as
Ju-on: The Grudge, and it felt like
The Blair Witch Project set in an asylum.
The similarities between
Grave Encounters and
The Blair Witch Project go beyond the shared use of the found footage format. They both trap the protagonists in areas that contort themselves in impossible ways and distort time to prevent the protagonists from leaving; I'm trying to remember if the two movies even share a scene where the protagonists are astonished by a compass spinning wildly. They both use characters standing unresponsively in corners to build tension, though
Grave Encounters actually pays off that tension, even as it feels less effective than the infamous scene in
The Blair Witch Project. Both movies feature what are frankly pretty unlikable characters seeking fame in haunted places, ignoring warnings about their safety, and filming their own demises. And they both open with direct address to the audience that what we're about to watch is real to create the mood. (And I'll leave out the discussion about their respective unsuccessful sequels, which both feature sets of characters who believed that their respective preceding movies were real and sought to find out more information about what happened to the preceding movies' protagonists.)
This is the third found footage movie I've seen in this year's marathon, and it succeeds at avoiding the format's pitfalls about as well as
The Bay did. It answered the question of why we're watching this (the producer of the fictional show "Grave Encounters" in the movie's universe probably thought this would be entertaining and profitable), how did we get this footage (a tossed off line about the producers receiving the mini DV tapes in the mail), why did the characters keep filming (they were filming a television show, and once the supernatural elements start exerting their power, the characters have to rely on the cameras' lights and nightvision mode to see their environments), why is what we're seeing so well edited (the production company combined the raw footage to create a commercial film), and how did the cameras keep their charge (the characters turn off the cameras intermittently, possibly to save the batteries' power). It used the format's strengths well to create tension, and it used some great visual tricks (ghostly hands manifesting from walls and doors to grab the protagonists) for good scares (a ghost rising from a bathtub of blood, grabbing a protagonist, and dragging him into the bathtub, where he disappears altogether). I especially appreciated the set-up of the still photography scare. In an early scene, the protagonists demonstrate how still photography works, and no supernatural elements are seen. In a later scene, the protagonists use the camera to take more pictures, and the audience sees ghostly images appear. The protagonists can't see them because the camera is not digital.
It's a horror movie, so it features some classic tropes, such as the woman being the first voice of caution and concern only for her to be ignored and the gradual escalation of violence inflicted on the protagonists. And on a larger scale, it strikes at the horror of the modern world's skepticism or outright dismissal about the past. The protagonists are told clearly that "Death Awaits" if they enter the building, but they go in because they're all only cynically pretending to believe in the supernatural (until the supernatural presents clear proof and present danger to them) to make a profit. The characters beseech the supernatural world to reveal itself to them, much to their later regret; they're disturbing what should be left alone because of curiosity and greed, and they get severely punished for it.
I was entertained by what I saw, but because the movie is much more explicit about the threat that the protagonists faced, it doesn't haunt me like
The Blair Witch Project did and still does. I also have no desire to see
Grave Encounters 2.