Grave Encounters 2

Alex Wright (Richard Harmon), a video blogger and aspiring horror film maker, becomes obsessed with the movie Grave Encounters. His obsession leads him to an apparent conspiracy, suggesting that the film was not a series of special effects and made up scenarios, but that the events actually happened and the crew of the show died in that building. Desperate to learn the truth, Alex enlists the help of his friends to break into the building where it was filmed and expose the cover up by the studio. However, they quickly regret the decision as they realise that the ghosts are indeed real and that they have found their latest victims.

Finally, we have another hand held horror film to blast through. I am a massive fan of these sorts of horrors and even though a lot of them are incredibly dull, pointless and terribly made (see Episode 50 and Apollo 18), there are some absolute gems out there that have taken my nerves and finely shredded them into microscopic fibres (see [.REC] and The Tunnel). The first Grave Encounters fell on the good side of the spectrum, providing some great scares wrapped in a brilliant premise. I was thoroughly impressed with the film but when I heard that there was a sequel, I thought long and hard before actually deciding to watch it. We’ve seen horror phenomenon such as Paranormal Activity and Saw ruined by unnecessary sequels that are just made for the cash grabbing studio execs. Grave Encounters was nowhere near as big of a success, so a sequel was always going to be a surprising development, no matter how good the film was. Nevertheless, here we are with part 2 and I have to say, well, it didn't really impress that much.

The film takes a while to get going, as we get to know the various students and how they inevitably love to party and drink a lot. It’s fairly standard stuff for the first half an hour or so, with some cheap and cheeky scares thrown in by simply showing various clips of the first film as Alex watches it. It’s a silly way to get some scares into the film, and I almost stopped watching because of it, as those weren’t original scares crafted from the events in this film, they were just cheap reruns. However, we eventually start unravelling the mystery of the unnamed insane asylum, and it starts to get creepy from there on in. There are brief moments of weirdness throughout the first half an hour as we suspect that something other-worldly may be pulling Alex towards his inevitable demise, but there’s nothing really substantial to scare us or keep is glued to the screen. It’s only when they eventually get to the asylum that things (obviously) start to get messed up.

In the pursuit of proving/disproving the cover up, we see the plucky students set up cameras in all the hotspots from the first film, and then things quickly go wrong as the ghosts make themselves known. Herein we find our first problem, as we get the same sort of scares as we did in the first film. True they stop resorting to using clips of the first film, but they are treading very familiar territory and don’t seem to make any sort of effort to do anything remotely new with it. This is probably my biggest complaint of the film, in that they have a whole complex of buildings to explore and they decide to explore the same one, rather than seeing if any of the others are haunted. You can see why they chose to go back, but there’s so much scope for new scares here that’s just wasted. We do get a couple of new treats, such as an ill advised trip into the nursery ward and a dramatic escape attempt, but overall there’s not a lot of great new material to get our nerves rattled. When the scares do happen though, they are a little overdone, especially on the effects side of things. Ghouls and ghosts with weird shifting faces are quite creepy but when you have the scared protagonist pointing the camera directly at what they should be running away from, the moment is lost. Horror, for me at least, is all about what you don’t see. Obviously these film makers don’t share the same viewpoint, as we’re given lengthy shots of horrifying ghouls, which become less scary the more time they’re on camera. In horror films, less is more, but here, we get everything!

I was initially planning on giving this a fairly positive review as when I came out of the movie, I thought it had been a lot better than I was expecting. But now I'm not so sure. I will admit that some of the film had me hooked, especially when they reveal something that triggers the final act. There are some interesting characters, only 2 of them mind you but it’s more than most horror films have nowadays, and the film certainly has enough plot twists to keep you at least a little interested. Now as I said, I was planning to give this film a good review, and to be honest, I still might, because it is nowhere near as flawed as some of its competitors (I refer once again to Episode 50), however, everything about this film is watchable, until the final 15 minutes or so. With one huge splash of special effects, the final act falls flat on its face and renders the whole film ridiculous and completely over-the-top, which was never really the aim of Grave Encounters. It’s something that actually tips the balance for me, as the sheer stupidity of this blunder puts the whole film in a completely different light, it makes it a film that’s just trying too hard to be big, loud and impressive, but just ends up looking dumb and stupid and for all it’s good ideas and interesting story development, it’s just not enough.

A promising sequel idea falls flat because of a few repeated scares and a terrible event in the third act. There’s a lot to like here, but it’s outweighed by the downright stupid stuff, making this a disappointing horror movie. Score: 4.0/10