Ghosthunters Never Learn

In perfect honesty, I didn’t really want to like Grave Encounters. These last few years have shown me more found footage haunted horror than I was ever hoping to see, a fact that I worry sometimes puts me in such a pessimistic place when watching genuinely good independent films (Skew and The Feed among them). But since so many people with respectable opinions had been recommending The Vicious Brothers’ Grave Encounters and the siren of Instant Watch began to sing, it was time to drink that half full glass and try it out.

Quick Plot: A talking head interview has a reality TV producer (of such fare as Tornado Chasers) setting up the footage we are about to see. According to him, some years before the advent of Ghost Hunters, Lance Preston and his team had been working on a reality show called "Grave Encounters." Upon their sixth episode set in the vacant Collingwood Mental Institution, bad things happened…all of which was caught on video for our hungry eyes to see.

We switch point of views to that of the production team’s cameras. Wielding the equipment is cameraman T.C. (a very natural Merwin Mondesir), "occult specialist" Sasha, tech guy Matt, and faux medium Houston. Leading the team is Lance, the typical tool you’d find on these kinds of shows. Always camera-ready, Sean Rogerson’s Lance captures the perfect essence of a reality show host: well-spoken, falsely earnest, and at his heart, a true hack.

The first twenty minutes or so of Grave Encounters is spent exploring the quite creepy abandoned asylum, with town historians and caretakers providing its dark backstory. Like its predecessor Session 9, the film is able to generate plenty of eeriness from peeling paint and overturned gurneys. Thankfully, it also has a sense of humor.

See, despite some method acting and great camera angles, “Grave Encounters” (the show within the movie Grave Encounters) ain’t exactly real. Just as the intense preparation for a night in the asylum is ramping up to eye-rolling levels of earnestness, Lance & Co. reveal that deep down, most of the scares they capture are manufactured. Observe a very funny interview with a quiet new-on-the-job gardener who after a second take and $20 bill, can tell you ALL about the haunting of Collingwood based on, um, his ten-year career there.

Of course, once the sun sets and the doors are locked, “Grave Encounters” the TV show gets exactly what is always wanted: genuine ghosts.

I won’t spoil any more of this film, which is a surprisingly great way to spend 90 minutes of your streaming time. As a fairly vocal opponent of found footage horror, I had next to no expectations that I would actually like Grave Encounters. And yet, once doors started to close, furniture started to float and food went rotten, I was 100% on board with following the crew. Yes, some of the more blatant scares feel a tad derivative of other films, but most actually work, especially since each puts our characters through such a terrible limbo-like hell. The film starts out with tongue in cheek; it ends with one on a dirty hospital floor.

High Notes

Lots of credit goes to the whole cast for being both natural in front of the (very close) cameras but still establishing their characters without anything forced. We never learn much about their personal lives, but each member of the team rings true and believable

Low Notes

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: naming characters after famous figures in and behind horror only works when it’s not obvious. Unless there really was a Dr. Arthur FRIEDKEN who performed lobotomies in the ‘60s…

Lessons Learned

With slow motion and music behind it, everything’s creepy

Ghosts generally don’t respond when you ask “Who’s there?”

When camping out in an abandoned mental asylum, consider packing Twinkies

Rent/Bury/Buy

What a refreshingly pleasant surprise Grave Encounters turned out to be. Sure, I could have used a little less shaky night-cam footage, but this is a film that is incredibly well-crafted and paced, with a great unique touch in terms of humor and scares. It’s a definite recommend and makes me anxious to see what The Vicious Brothers do next. Especially if it means changing their name. Because as much as I liked this film, I do not like typing “The Vicious Brothers.”

Yeah, I went there.

Location Location Location

As some of you know and others don't care about, I spent the last year or so contributing to Pop Syndicate, a recently renovated website that lost all its past content (and writers). The following article appeared in 2009 and since you can't find it anywhere else in InterWorld, I'm rerunning it here. Apologies for the deja vu.


Some time back, I mentioned a movie that deserves no real further discussion: Moscow Zero, the Val Kilmer-headlined Russian thriller with little thrills and even less Kilmer. What bothered me was not so much that the film was dull (because anything that helps me sleep is welcome in my life) but that it wasted one of the greatest potential settings of any horror. The Moscow Metro system is deeper than hell and probably crawling with more agents of evil than Walmart in December. 

Naturally, this got me thinking of other places that naturally frighten visitors and the films that utilized set location for maximum thrills. Enter at your own risk:

Closed carnivals

Is there anything sadder than a man-made playground abandoned by man?  Squeaky rides and stale popcorn just aren’t the same without screaming kids that beg for seconds and then throw up the remains on wooden roller coaster...especially when the amusement park is littered with ghostly apparitions that really like to waltz. Hence, the classic 1962 Carnival of Souls, a beautifully surreal ghost story inspired by a lonely Salt Lake City locale and filmed to translate its spooky atmosphere onto the big screen. 

Warehouses

Part of my workday is stationed in an overcrowded appliance warehouse. Recently, I took a wrong turn and ended up navigating a labyrinth of boxes that would make the Goblin King grip his codpiece in GPS-less fear. Storage facilities are dangerous places, and not just because they tend to be generously stocked with sharp objects and sloppily stacked with heavy boxes. While Final Destination 3 packed on the precarious nail gun and other fatal industrial accouterments, my heart goes out to Child's Play 2 for its factory finale. Many people never understand why a two-foot doll instills such fear in so many filmgoers, but imagine a petite plastic redhead chasing you through an endless maze of ominous cardboard. It’s scary. And brown.

Hotels

The thing about lodging facilities is, despite all lazily standard attempts to make you think otherwise, they’re not your home. In fact, they’re no one’s home, yet countless scores of travelers have come before to sleep, make love, and flip through basic cable, all under the watch of bland pastel paintings in rooms that look identical to a million others across your respective country. There’s something existential and empty about the very idea of a pay-by-the-night place. Of course, The Shining is the definitive hotel horror for capturing the vast emptiness of a place that has been well lived (and died)-in before a cracking family moves in. I’d also point to the more recent Bug. The terror of this Friedkin thriller/drama/horror/undefined piece of disturbia doesn’t necessarily lie in its setting, but Ashley Judd’s cheap residential motel does help to create an atmosphere that never feels quite like home--thus making her lonely and longing waitress all the more vulnerable to forming a not-so-healthy connection with Michael Shannon’s quiet and slowly unraveling stranger. One thing’s for sure: by the end of Bug, you’ll never have to worry about confusing that room with the Day’s Inn.

Empty asylums

What’s scarier than a home for the criminally insane? How about one abandoned by the criminally insane? House on Haunted Hill makes nice use of its institutional mansion setting, but few films have created such a terrifying location as Brad Anderson’s Session 9. Filmed in the former Danvers State Hospital (aka the State Lunatic Hospital at Danvers, a far scarier title), Session 9 follows a frustrated asbestos removal crew and their ill-fated attempt to clean up am empty  (and most likely haunted) asylum. Like Carnival of Souls, Session 9 absorbs its environment, squeezing every drop of horror and letting it spread into the cast, music, lighting, and overall filmic effect. Plus, it achieves the seemingly impossible task of making David Caruso sympathetic. 

Tundra

I gave up watching Survivor the day Mark Burnett announced the show would never be filmed in the Arctic. To me, watching resourceful people combat frostbite and fight polar bears is far more exciting than seeing bad cases of sunburn aggravating oozing mosquito bites... which is probably why I hold winter horror in such high esteem. For true frozen conditions, John Carpenter’s The Thing pretty much corners the vast, cold market on ice, especially since Kurt Russell & Co. battle the boredom and isolation of Antarctica while  dealing with a shape-shifting gooey creature set on world domination. The more recent 30 Days of Night took great advantage of the Arctic Circle’s weirdly misunderstood sunrise patterns by, naturally, making it a haven for vampires. Sure, it fudged the actual earth science a tad, but 30 Days of Night also answered the question for why America’s largest state has such a small population.  

So my safely nestled readers, which films have you constantly noting the nearest exit? Also, what are some of your everyday hot spots just waiting for a bloody massacre to redden to floors?

Horror Settings That Naturally Scare

Some places have such natural fear factor, all directors need to do is toss in a few actors, dim the lights, and mix a few unusual sound effects to create a simple and scary horror film. This week at Pop Syndicate, I take a look at a few locations made to inspire nightmares and the movies that made them real.


Take a read and add any films that I'm overlooking. I will confess, my mind is buzzing with the excitement as tonight is my field trip to Fangoria's Fest. I haven't been to a convention since 2004, when Ken Forree's gargantuan handshake almost crushed my stubby little fingers, Betsey Palmer smiled like a kindly grandmother at the fact that I attended with my mom, and I joined the club of fans who have caught major diva attitude from Tom Savini. Tonight, I'm keeping my expectations at a minimum...


mainly because I just rented a new apartment and it seriously needs some decorations. Toy booths and movie posters, here I come!