Reality TV crew gets more than it bargained for in GRAVE ENCOUNTERS
GRAVE ENCOUNTERS (The Vicious Brothers, 2011)
Tuesday, April 26, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 11:30 pm
Thursday, April 29, Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, 12 noon
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In Grave Encounters, Sean Rogerson stars as Lance Preston, the host of a ghost-hunter reality TV series who is not averse to slipping locals a little cash to lie about having seen or heard creepy things at their latest location in order to pump up the drama. In this case, the Grave Encounters team — sound recordist Sasha Parker (Ashleigh Gryzko), tech expert Matt White (Juan Riedinger), cameraman T. C. Gibson (Merwin Mondesir), and pseudo-spirit medium Houston Gray (Mackenzie Gray), along with Preston — have committed to spending the night locked inside the long-abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, which may or may not be haunted by the ghosts of doctors and patients pasts. Just when it’s looking like there actually might be something supernatural going on, they decide to take off early, but the building is not about to let them all go so easily. Shot in twelve days in a vacant mental facility in Vancouver, Grave Encounters, written, edited, and directed by the Vicious Brothers (Stuart Ortiz and Colin Minihan), presents a promising premise but takes way too long to start delivering the necessary thrills and chills. And when things finally do start happening, they lack any kind of shock or surprise, falling flat when then should have had audiences on the edge of their seats. Evoking such ghost stories as The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and The Legend of Hell House, Grave Encounters is filled with potential that never reaches the scare levels of its far more successful predecessors.