| Grave Encounters | |
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Promotional poster |
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| Directed by | The Vicious Brothers |
| Produced by |
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| Written by | The Vicious Brothers |
| Starring | Sean Rogerson Ashleigh Gryzko Mackenzie Gray Juan Riedinger Merwin Mondesir |
| Music by | Quynne Craddock |
| Cinematography | Tony Mirza |
| Editing by | The Vicious Brothers |
| Distributed by | Tribeca Film Festival |
| Release date(s) | June 1, 2011 |
| Running time | 95 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Box office | $2,408,334[1] |
Grave Encounters is a 2011 Canadian-American supernatural horror film shot in the found footage style where it is recorded by a video camera in a first person point of view as made famous by The Blair Witch Project and Cloverfield. Written and directed by The Vicious Brothers, the film premiered on April 22, 2011 at the Tribeca Film Festival to favorable reviews. The film was released on August 25, 2011 in select theaters using the Eventful Demand It and Video On Demand via Comcast. The film premiered internationally in Italy via distributor Eagle Pictures retitled ESP Fenomeni Paranormali on June 1, 2011.[1]
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The crew of "Grave Encounters", a ghost-hunting reality television show, are shooting an episode inside the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where the show host, Lance, takes the crew for investigation of the unexplained phenomena that has been reported for years. Accompanied with him are Sasha, a supernatural expert, Camera Man "T.C.", a technical expert named Matt, and a psychic named Houston. At first, while filming an introduction before the lock down, Lance is skeptical of the existence of ghosts and even bribes the gardener into claiming on film about supernatural occurrences.
Before the lock down, the caretaker gives them a tour of the building. He shows them a window on the top floor that opens on its own, a trashed bathroom where a young female patient committed suicide in a bathtub by slitting her wrists, a hall said to be haunted by a bald man in a lab coat, a former patient's room with the words "DEMONS ON THE WALL" written all over, and the underground tunnel that experiences frequent cold spots. A historian then reports that there were over 80,000 patients, and a doctor was known for performing unethical experiments and lobotomies on the patients. The doctor was later killed by escaped patients, but was never a famous story as it was overshadowed by the death of Babe Ruth.
All in the name of good television, they voluntarily lock themselves inside the building for the night and begin a paranormal investigation, capturing everything on camera. They set their camp up by the main door, which is locked from the outside by the caretaker. Hours into the investigation, no signs of paranormal activity have been seen, but the window opens itself. While filming around, T.C. is distracted with a phone call and an unseen force moves the wheelchair kept behind him slightly. Moments later, he notices the first paranormal activity by himself when a door slams behind him all by itself. Trying to find more evidence, Lance and his team try to make contact with the entities and hear a bloodcurdling scream followed by a big bang which turns out to be the noise of an operation bed that was apparently turned over by a powerful force. While viewing the upper floor, Sasha attempts to contact a spirit and runs in a panic when her hair is pulled by an unseen entity. Lance takes photos (which were developed later) which show spiritual beings in them.
With a half an hour left before the caretaker comes back to unlock the door out, they start packing. Matt goes to the bathroom and a room to get his cameras, and when he reaches the top floor camera, he sees that the window is opened again. He hears a sound, and thinking it is one of the crew, goes to see it and then disappears. T.C., Sasha, and Lance try to find Matt, and find his camera equipment scattered on the floor. Despite Sasha's objections, Lance makes T.C. search on his own. T.C. is pushed off the stairs by an unknown force, and the team go back to the camp unsuccessful. Meanwhile, it is past 6AM and T.C., who has a daughter, is growing frustrated and scared. In frustration, he decides to force the front door open with a medical table. As they finally open it, they are shocked to see that the main door leads to another hallway of rooms. They find an emergency door, but are shocked to find that there are no exits, only more hallways. Lance's cellphone now shows the time 1PM, seven hours past their due to leave, and the windows show no sign of daylight outside.
They take a nap, but their light falls and smashes on the ground. In desperation, T.C. suggests they use the fire exit on the top floor. As they climb the stairs, they see that the final floor has been barricaded by a wall. They try to examine whether or not they are lost by referring to a wall map. Meanwhile, they hear Matt's screams and following his screams, they enter a room where a metal cot is thrown across the room. They nap in a room and are later shocked to find the word "Hello" scratched all over Sasha's back. The group continues walking, when Houston turns to face them, a girl ahead runs across the hallway. Thinking it is Matt, they follow her to a room, where she scares them away with her demonic distorted face. They hide in a room but Houston gets left behind.
Houston searches for the group. As he walks across the hall, he is strangled by an unseen force. He continues to run, but is thrown by another force, killing him. Meanwhile, Lance, Sasha and T.C. (all who had taken refuge in the store room) took a nap. Upon waking up however, they were shocked to find that on their wrists were hospital tags with their names perfectly printed on it. Infuriated, they desperately search for another way out of the hospital. T.C. goes ahead and discovers Matt crouched down in a large room wearing nothing but a hospital gown. They try to get Matt to explain what happened to him and if he knows of an exit, but they quickly find that Matt has been driven insane by the ghosts. He only mumbles nonsensical phrases about his apparent psychological disorder and unseen people in the hospital. They find an empty room and settle there and attempt to get Matt to talk. When asked if there is a way out, Matt replies that the way out is to "get better" and that "he will help you too" he then succumbs to a fit of hysterical laughter. The crew stops to rest for a while. Sasha is growing increasingly ill and Lance gives her some water to help her, but it is apparent that they need to get her medical help.
The camera fades out and fades in again to see many black hands passing through the walls, forcing Sasha, Lance, Matt, and T.C. to run out of the room. They hide in the haunted bathroom, behind a turned bathtub. They move the camera to the haunted bathtub, and see that the tub is filled with blood. Lance, Sasha, and T.C. attempt to leave the bathroom, but Matt is curiously looking over the tub. T.C. pulls Matt away from the tub but is pulled in by a blood-soaked figure. They turn over the tub, but T.C. is gone, sucked into some other dimension. They run to a nearby elevator, and Lance attempts to pry it open. He heads to the room with writings on the wall to retrieve a metal rod from a medical bed, but finds a bloody puddle with a human tongue lying in it. He looks up and sees a bald male demon. The demon screams and chases after Lance back towards the others. He barely escapes and manages to use the rod to pry open the elevator. They hear the sound of thumping, and Lance goes to investigate, and is then attacked again by the bald demon. With Sasha's Help, they attempt to shut the aggressive bald demon out by shutting the hallway double doors. While they do that, Matt plays with the camera and then commits suicide by falling down the empty elevator shaft. Sasha and Lance manage to climb down the elevator, and they pry open the door to the underground tunnels after stopping a moment to mourn Matt.
Sasha and Lance walk through the tunnels, but Sasha collapses and vomits blood. They stop from exhaustion and nap. While napping, a camera Matt stationed at the underground tunnel shows a mist that appears and makes Sasha disappear. Lance wakes up shortly after, and frantically searches for Sasha, but to no avail. Desperate and alone, Lance continues his walk to the end. Losing his sanity, he eats several rats. He speaks to the camera and curses the people who may be watching. His walk stops when he sees the door he and Houston saw earlier on their tour, and enters the room, no longer afraid of the rats inside. He discovers it is the legendary operating room of the doctor who used the patients as test subjects. Going further into the room, he finds pictures of what appear to be his friends being operated on, as well as a Satanic altar. He turns around and sees nurses and the doctor working on a patient. The camera blinks, and the doctor appears in front of the camera and screams with a grotesquely contorted face much like the female demon from earlier. The doctor, claiming Lance is insane, grabs him. The camera is pointed away from the scene to a book on how to operate mental patients, with Lance's pleas of sanity and his screams in the background. The camera goes out, and returns to Lance, with his eyes bleeding, implying he had a lobotomy. He says a few parting words before the screen finally goes blue.
Grave Encounters is a low budget film produced for under half a million dollars. It was released on October 18, 2011 on DVD. The movie came out for full digital download on iTunes on December 19, 2011.
Grave Encounters received mixed reviews from critics. While the New York Press granted it the "Scariest Film Since The Ring",[2] other reviews were not as favorable. FleshEatingZipper wrote, "...this bastard child of The Blair Witch Project and House on Haunted Hill provides less scares than both combined."[3] The rating website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 4.7 out of 10.[4]