Grave Encounters (2011)

Found Footage is often snubbed by a certain faction of the movie-going world, considered dull, unoriginal and unwatchable due to the 'shakey camera' cliche; I maintain that it is the same as basically any other subgenre, in that there are a few really good examples and many bad ones, but the subgenre itself does not inherently make a movie bad - or good, for that matter. I have quite a few post-Blair Witch favourites of FF, which include Crowsnest, Apollo 18 and the Grave Encounters movies. The duology is unprecedented proof of that rare wonder: the sequel that lives up to its original. Writers/directors The Vicious Brothers are very much my kind of filmmakers: my generation, grungy as fuck, and worshippers of all good horror. They are the sort of dedicated and learned auteurs that you would be happy to see succeed, and they did exactly that with the Grave Encounters films.

"It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"

In a throwback to the format of the very first FF movie Cannibal Holocaust, the footage that constitutes the main narrative of the movie is set to a realistic framework, in which a TV producer explains to a documentary camera that the following picture was compiled from 76 hours of footage found after the disappearance of his crew on a job at an abandoned and supposedly haunted asylum. The show is Grave Encounters, and it is basically Ghost Hunters, as depicted by South Park ("It's the gayest show in the fucking world!"). Host Lance Preston and his colleagues pout at the camera, desperately try to look hard, and contrive non-existant ghostly experience, while we see their many outtakes in which their disbelief in the paranormal and generally unprofessional attitude is made evident.

They have arranged to spend the night - eight hours - locked in Collingwood Asylum, with the cooperation of the building's caretaker, who chains the door from the outside, and promises to return for them in the morning (how is this very notion somehow unsettling?). For a while they go about their media-whore jobs, but they inevitably soon come to realise that the ghosts they have spent five previous episodes simulating do actually exist, and they are none too satisfied with this revelation.

If you can't figure what happens in the next two seconds, you
have not seen a movie this side of the millennium.

I have yet to investigate any special features on my DVD, but have previously watched behind-the-scenes featurettes on the sequel, and it is very insightful. One of the main objectives that the Vicious Brothers had was that the many old horror tropes would be null and void in their line of narrative.

Like a souped up 1408, the asylum is an entity in itself, and shifts its shape to fuck with its captives. Every supposed escape and exit leads to another dark corridor. When 'rules' no longer apply, we the audience are unable to judge the characters' choices, because there is basically no way out and no way to fight. It is an inescapable nightmare, and this makes for a brilliantly tense viewing experience.