# Grave Encounters

Grave Encounters is a 2011 Canadian found footage supernatural horror film written, directed and edited by the Vicious Brothers. It stars Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryzko, Merwin Mondesir, Mackenzie Gray, and Juan Riedinger as the crew of a paranormal reality television program who lock themselves in a supposedly haunted psychiatric hospital in search of evidence of paranormal activity, as they shoot what ends up becoming their final episode.
Grave Encounters premiered on April 22, 2011, at the Tribeca Film Festival. Prior to its premiere, its trailer went viral online, generating over 30 million views. The film had a limited theatrical run in select theaters in the United States, and was released on video-on-demand on August 25, 2011. Two months prior, the film had its Italian premiere via distributor Eagle Pictures under the title ESP Fenomeni Paranormali.
The film was a financial success, grossing over $5 million against a $120,000 budget, and received mixed reviews from critics, who noted the film was spontaneously scary but also repetitious and lacking originality. The film has garnered a cult following since its release, and a sequel was released in 2012.

## Plot

Jerry Hartfield is the producer of Grave Encounters, a reality television program directed by ghost hunter Lance Preston. Hartfield explains that the show was canceled after five episodes following the crew's disappearance and presents raw scenes from recovered footage of the sixth and final episode.
The Grave Encounters crew consists of Lance, occult specialist Sasha Parker, surveillance operator Matt White, cameraman T.C. Gibson, and fake medium Houston Grey. The crew is invited to examine the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital, where unexplained phenomena have been reported for years. Kenny, the hospital's caretaker, takes the crew on a day tour and informs them of the hospital's history, particularly of a doctor named Arthur Friedkin, who performed unethical experiments and lobotomies on the hospital's patients before being killed by them.
The crew lock themselves inside the hospital for the night and began their investigation, setting up camp near the main entrance and positioning static cameras throughout the building. No paranormal activity seems to occur within the first few hours until T.C. captures a door slamming behind him. The crew attempts to establish contact with the invisible entities responsible for this demonstration, and the incidents soon become more flagrant and hostile. The crew begins to repack in preparation for the Kenny's return. Matt sets out alone to retrieve the static cameras, but suddenly disappears.
When neither Matt or Kenny return, the crew forces the front doors open, but discover that they lead to another hallway, as well as to other false exits. The crew also notes that it is still nighttime outside the building when their clocks indicate that it is well past morning. In their continued search for Matt and an exit, the crew encounters a girl whose face demonically distorts. As the crew flees in fear, Houston is separated from the others and is strangled to death by an invisible force. When the crew catch their breath, they discover that they have been fitted with hospital identification bracelets bearing their names. The crew eventually find Matt, wearing a hospital gown and having gone mad; he mumbles nonsense about his apparent mental disorders, and explains that the only means of escape is to be "cured" by the hospital's residents.
T.C. is pulled into a blood-filled bathtub by a ghost and disappears, while Matt throws himself down an elevator shaft as Lance and Sasha are attacked by a demon. Lance and Sasha enter the tunnels in search of an exit. Sasha falls ill and is abducted by a mist as she and Lance sleep. The terrified and unstable Lance wanders the tunnels alone and feeds on live rats to survive. He finds a door leading into Friedkin's operating room, which contains an altar and evidence of satanic rituals and black magic. He turns to see the apparitions of Friedkin and several nurses, who drag the screaming Lance to an operating table. The camera cuts out for a few moments before it is turned back on by a lobotomized Lance, who proclaims that he is cured and allowed to leave.

## Cast

* Sean Rogerson as Lance Preston
* Ashleigh Gryzko as Sasha Parker
* Merwin Mondesir as T.C. Gibson
* Mackenzie Gray as Houston Grey
* Fred Keating as Gary Crawford
* Juan Riedinger as Matt White
* Arthur Corber as Dr. Arthur Friedkin
* Bob Rathie as Kenny Sandavol (Caretaker)
* Matthew K. McBride as Spiritual Force
* Ben Wilkinson as Jerry Hartfield
* Michele Cummins as Bathtub Demon
* Shawn Macdonald as Morgan Turner
* Max Train as Punk Guy
* Marita Eason as Punk Girl

## Production

Grave Encounters was produced in collaboration with American Express, Digital Interference, Twin Engine Films and Darclight.

### Development

   "[...] it's always a question with a found-footage movie of 'why are they filming to begin with?' And it just seemed like a perfect thing because obviously if it's a TV crew that's trying to capture ghost-like activity that's actually happening, they're gonna want to keep rolling and keep shooting even when things can get kinda bad. So it's just a perfect concept."
The film was written and directed by the Vicious Brothers, Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz. The pair sought to create a project in the horror genre, and in order to maintain a low budget, decided to utilise "the mockumentary format" at a time when found-footage horror films such as 2007's Paranormal Activity were achieving commercial success. According to Minihan, he and Ortiz wondered, "why has no one made a fucking found-footage film out of these ghost-hunting shows?"
Minihan and Ortiz wrote a script for the film roughly 85 pages in length, though they allowed the members of the cast to improvise during filming.

### Filming

Grave Encounters was filmed in Riverview Hospital, a mental institute in Coquitlam, British Columbia; the hospital has served as a location for a number of other television and film productions.

### Visual effects

A number of visual effects in the film were accomplished using computer-generated imagery (CGI). One sequence, in which a character is thrown across a room, was initially filmed as a practical effect using a stunt performer. Upon reviewing the footage of the stunt performer being "thrown", Minihan and Ortiz were dissatisfied with the result; they then asked the performer to run, jump, and fall to the ground several times, and completed the final effect in post-production.

## Release

A teaser trailer for the film was first uploaded to YouTube in December 2010. The trailer went viral, garnering over 1.5 million views in three months. The film's distribution rights were acquired by Tribeca Film.
Grave Encounters premiered on April 22, 2011, at the Tribeca Film Festival. It had its Italian premiere on June 1, 2011, via distributor Eagle Pictures, under the title ESP Fenomeni Paranormali. The film was released in the United States on August 25, 2011 in select theaters using the Eventful Demand It and video on demand via Comcast.

## Reception
### Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 63% based on 16 reviews, with an average rating of 5.5/10. On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 33 out of 100, based on four reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".
In her review of the film for The New York Times, Jeannette Catsoulis wrote: "Following in the stampeding footsteps of The Blair Witch Project and the Paranormal Activity franchise, the filmmakers seem unaware that they're beating a dead horse." Mike Hale, also writing for The New York Times, felt that the film's "claustrophobic, infrared images, supposedly taken from the tapes of a TV crew that spent the night in a mental hospital, offer some real scares, though the movie starts to feel long and repetitious before its 92 minutes are over." Nick Schager of Slant Magazine gave the film a score of one-and-a-half out of four stars, writing that it "can't even pretend to be anything other than hopelessly derivative." Aaron Hillis, in a negative review of the film for The Village Voice, concluded: "Windows quietly open, wheelchairs roll, faces contort into cheesy CGI ghouls, and 'digital artifacts' cover up the low-budget seams. But true terror needs at least some authenticity. That's perhaps too much to ask of a faked movie about a faked reality show that still can't scare up a fresh idea."
Conversely, Jon Reiss of the New York Press called Grave Encounters the "scariest film since The Ring." Dennis Harvey, in his review of the film for Variety, wrote that its "creepiness factor is sufficient to rate this a notch above genre average". Vox's Dylan Scott recommended the film, writing that it "effectively spoof[s] those ghost hunter shows that were briefly a hot trend, while still building toward a genuinely suspenseful second half." Meagan Navarro, in a positive review of the film for Bloody Disgusting, wrote that "the filmmakers toss subtlety out the window in favor of fun, in your face chills that stick their landing." Felicity Burton of Scream magazine wrote that, had the film "kept to the subtle scares, and dumped the CGI ghosts, it would have been a lot better", but concluded: "If you still haven't had your fill of found footage films, it's definitely worth a watch."

## Sequel

A sequel titled Grave Encounters 2, written by the Vicious Brothers and directed by John Poliquin, was released on October 2, 2012. In May 2015, the Vicious Brothers announced plans for a third installment, entitled Grave Encounters 3: The Beginning, but it never went into production.