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Thanks to the overwhelming success of movies like Paranormal Activity, indie horror flicks are all the rage these days. And Canadian newcomers The Vicious Brothers are jumping on the scary movie bandwagon with Grave Encounters, a heavily-buzzed found footage thriller that’s now playing in select theaters, as well as through video on demand.
For the sixth episode of a new ghost-hunting reality show called Grave Encounters, host Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson) and his crew have set up shop at the Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, an abandoned building that’s said to be haunted by the ghosts of former patients.
The set-up of this “real” paranormal thriller couldn’t be any better. Using “authentic behind-the-scenes footage,” The Vicious Brothers develop the characters and expose them for what they really are: a bunch of skeptics and phonies. Smarmy host Lance interviews those in the know, sometimes paying to get the stories he wants—even if they’re not true. Paranormal expert Houston (Mackenzie Gray) is really just an actor. And though tough girl Sasha (Ashleigh Gryzko) seems to be at least intrigued by the idea of seeing a real ghost, the others are just there to make a buck.
The characters give the start of the film the same kind of entertainment value that they’re trying to bring to their TV show. The more you get to know them, the more you’ll look forward to seeing what happens once they come face to face with an actual ghost or two.
At first, the evening starts out like any other—but as soon as the crew members start hearing strange noises, they decide to pack up and get ready to leave. But the groundskeeper doesn’t show up when he’s supposed to, and they’re left locked inside an eerie old building that seems to be changing around them.
The dark, creepy surroundings of the psychiatric hospital are enough to put any viewer instantly on edge as the crew members wander down the hallways and explore the cramped rooms. You’ll expect something to happen at any second—but you’ll be kept waiting for quite some time, jumping at shadows and rodents and clever lighting tricks.
The slow-building suspense is definitely tense—and when the horrors finally begin, they give the film some intriguing psychological touches, as the crew members quickly start to lose their cool (and each other). The ghostly encounters, however, are pretty few and far between—and the hauntings manifest themselves in a distracting variety of ways. Instead of focusing on just invisible spirits or wandering ghosts or physical encounters or some kind of mysterious mist or other strange phenomena, The Vicious Brothers go for all of the above. The variety definitely makes the film’s horrors unpredictable, but there are so many random occurrences—most of which are unlike anything that any witnesses reported experiencing there before—that it seems as though the directors decided to try a little bit of everything, hoping that something would work.
In a way, it does work. The scares and creepy surprises will sometimes make you jump right out of your seat—but they provide an unfocused and unconvincing conclusion to a film that had the potential to be so much more than just another cheap scare.
