Review of Grave Encounters (2011) by Danny L — 06 Aug 2012

This film starts off with the usual found footage kind of thing with a TV producer that what the audience is about to see "is real". The "found footage" 76 hours of untouched, undoctored from several different cameras that were used by the team from the paranormal hunters show "Grave Encounters".

Then it cuts to the found footage and it's pretty much set up like an episode like any of your everyday "Ghost Hunters" episode. The characters are set up in a way to make it look like they don't believe in anything paranormal at all.

But once they get locked inside, things start to get scary. Most of the scares consist of loud noise jump scares, but there are quite a lot of moments to where if you put yourself into perspective of what the characters are going through, the movie becomes horrifying.

The acting is believable but the plot has it's moments to where it feels like other movies, like "The Blair Witch Project". That isn't really much of a problem though, since the story moves along to where those feelings of familiarity are gone quickly with more scary things going on.

The last 45 minutes are pure suspense, horror, and terror. This movie is a great time if you like being scared, and it's better than the "Paranormal Activity" series. There are some other minor problems with the movie though.

Some little things don't get explained here and there, and the effects sometimes feel really cheap. Also only a few scares fall flat. I'm not gonna spoil anything, so I'll just leave it at that.

Overall this movie is great with a group of friends at night or by yourself alone in the dark at midnight like what I just did. B+.