Half Arsed Review: Grave Encounters

I was expecting to hate Grave Encounters, another found footage film in a long line of found footage film horrors. It seems most horror's I watch these days are this kind, because they're cheap to make and easy to do.

Grave Encounters is about a team of paranormal investigators who are filming for the 6th episode of their Most Haunted style TV show "Grave Encounters". They decide to lock themselves in a haunted asylum for the night and things don't quite go as planned which isn't good for them, but good for the viewer.

I'd previously watched a similar film called Episode 50, which had a similar concept, but was an awful awful movie that went from hand held camera footage to regular movie footage. It blew.

So my expectations were pretty low for this, but I was pleasantly surprised. I wouldn't say that this is an amazing film, but it's not awful either. I'd say it kinda sits in the middle, it's okay and has some good moments, but overall doesn't shock or scare you as much as the film makers intended.

Here's the good bits (Spoiler-ish)

Their "Psychic" is just an actor pretending to be a psychic, this is quite fun and as things go to shit he is a bit of comedic relief.

There's a great story device half way through that I won't divulge on for fear of spoiling it.

Unlike a lot of found footage films, stuff happens and you see it. The CGI is fairly good but there's a few moments where it's not quite as good as it could be.



Unlike other found footage films, you actually see shit happening!

The film started off with a producer stating that you're watching footage that hasn't been tampered with, however he's never seen again. Really they should have book ended it with him and not shown credits of the actors who were in the film (thus spoiling the illusion that this is found footage)

All in all it's a decent stab at the genre, has some okay scares and the internal logic of the plot and characters makes sense.

Rent it.