GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2 (2012)

Studio:       Tribeca Film
Director:    John Poliquin
Writer:       The Vicious Brothers
Producer:  Shawn Angelski, Martin Fisher
Stars:     Richard Harmon, Leanne Lapp, Dylan Playfair, Stephanie Bennett, Howard Lai, Sean Rogerson

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Believing that the first “Grave Encounters” movie may have been real, a group of film school students begins a paranormal investigation of their own. 

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Amateur bloggers review the first “Grave Encounters” film both positively and negatively in a series of video clips. Film student Alex Wright concludes with a negative review. His YouTube handle is given as “Alex_MovieKid88” and his video reviews are part of his “Alex’s Movie Madness” series. Alex’s friend Trevor Thompson convinces him to go to a Halloween party because Jennifer Parker, a girl who likes Alex, is there. Typical college party hijinks ensue.

November 07, 2011 – The next morning, Alex’s review receives a video response from “deathawaits.” The video is of Sean Rogerson from the first “Grave Encounters” wearing a hospital gown and acting strangely. Alex and his friends are busy filming Alex’s horror movie, “Slash N’ Burn” with D.P. Jared Chao and soundperson Tessa Hamill. Jennifer is the star. Although it is blurred out on the tape, they appear to be students at the University of Washington. Alex receives a text of numbers that he realizes are latitude and longitude coordinates for the location of the Vancouver mental institution where “Grave Encounters” was filmed. Research shows that hospital caretaker Kenny Sandoval killed himself in 2004 and that none of the actors have been seen since the movie.

November 21, 2011 – Alex is dissatisfied with the progress on his film. He obtains a phone number for the mother of Sean Rogerson, the actor who played Lance Preston in the first film. He and Trevor go to her house on the 23rd, as she claims that Sean still lives there, but it turns out she has dementia.

Alex’s obsession with the truth behind “Grave Encounters” continues to grow, and he alienates Jennifer in the process. Alex’s printer receives a call sheet from Hartfeld Productions, the company of Jerry Hartfeld, the producer seen in the first movie. Alex flies to L.A. and is kicked off the set, but Hartfeld meets with him later. Hartfeld admits that “Grave Encounters” was real, but no one will believe Alex. The Vicious Brothers were actually two production assistants paid to do press for the first film.

December 03, 2011 – Alex convinces Jennifer, Trevor, Jared, and Tessa to come with him to Canada to make a new horror movie and investigate the sanitarium. A security guard claims the building is full of asbestos and kicks the students off the premises. He tries to confiscate their footage in the process. After checking into a hotel, Alex receives a message from deathawaits to meet in the underground tunnels at 3am. The group returns to the hospital during the night and sneaks in. They set up several stationary cameras and begin exploring. All of the students are using air horns and glow sticks to mark their locations so they do not become lost. In the meeting room in the tunnel, the group finds a table turned into a homemade Ouija board. After spelling out its name as deathawaits, the planchette moves by itself and tells the students to “film everything.” The furniture then flies against the walls.

The security guard bursts in through a door. While in the process of ejecting the students from the property, the guard goes upstairs to investigate noises. The group hears two gunshots, but cannot find the guard. They decide to collect the equipment and leave. Jared is pulled through the fourth floor window in the room with the window that opened by itself in the first film. The rest of the group realizes that the layout of the hospital has changed. In the children’s ward, the group finds a little girl who turns into a black-faced ghost with an elongated mouth. Everyone runs. Alone in another hallway, multiple doors burst from their hinges before something crushes Tessa and drags her into the darkness. The remaining three find the security guard trapped on an operating table before he combusts. A creature with an elongated mouth grabs at Trevor.

Alex, Trevor, and Jennifer manage to escape and return to their hotel. They gather their things and take the elevator to the lobby, but when the doors open, they are back in the hospital. The three friends find Sean from the first movie, but he is now a raving lunatic. Sean eats a live rat. Sean leads them to a freestanding red door with chains all around it in the middle of a room. He indicates that they need to open the door, even though it leads nowhere. Alex tells Sean they have bolt cutters but they lost the bag. Sean guides them through the hospital, at one point opening a closet door three times until it leads to a hallway. Sean drinks from a toilet. He then smashes a hole in a wall. When they go through, gravity shifts, but they find the bag. While they rest, a security camera shows another camera rising from the ground and operating by itself.

Sean clubs Trevor with a pipe and then chokes him to death in a bathroom. Sean leads Alex and Jennifer back to the red door and cuts the chains. Going through the doorway does nothing. Sean goes to a patient room with writing scrawled on the walls. New words appear that tell Sean he needs to collect all of the footage and finish the film. Alex and Jennifer find the room that Sean discovered at the end of the first film. They hide and witness a vision of doctors performing a lobotomy and then sacrificing a baby in some sort of occult ritual. A nurse appears to Alex and Jennifer and turns into a ghost face.

Alex and Jennifer run back to the red door. Sean tells them that only one person will be allowed to escape by finishing the film. Cameras rise from the floor and film a fight between Alex and Sean. Jennifer hits Sean with a pipe. A portal opens in a wall and sucks in Sean before closing. Realizing that only one person can survive, Alex beats Jennifer to death with one of the cameras. He walks through the red door into a desert.

December 05, 2011 – Police take Alex into custody as he wanders with a bag of cameras in the middle of a road. Alex later appears with Jerry Hartfeld in an epilogue claiming that “Grave Encounters 2” was all a hoax, although Alex appears to have been manipulated. Alex tells the audience not to go looking for the hospital just before map coordinates briefly appear.

---

Review:

The concept behind “Grave Encounters 2” will be somewhat familiar to those who have seen “Human Centipede 2.”  The sequel takes place in a world where the first “Grave Encounters” (review here) exists very much like it does in this reality.  Unlike Human Centipede 2’s Martin Lomax, however, “Grave Encounters 2” protagonist Alex Wright is not a fan of the original.  Alex is a film student whose negative YouTube review of the first film earns him a series of mysterious messages.  Alex gradually uncovers a conspiracy that “Grave Encounters” was in fact real footage after all, and none of the “actors” from that film have been seen since.  With his film school buddies prepped for making a “found footage” movie of their own, Alex goes in search of what really happened to the ill fated victims of the first “Grave Encounters.”

It is a different spin for a “found footage” sequel, and it works well to bring a fresher approach to a genre where less and less distinguishes itself as a standout.  Despite there being only about a year between “Grave Encounters” releases, it does not have the feel of other annualized horror franchises that stretch out old ideas instead of crafting new ones.  “Grave Encounters 2” has a genuine desire to exist beyond siphoning bucks with a quick cash-in.  It tries expanding its own universe with an atypical setup and with its phantasmagoric tangents.

The Vicious Brothers are having a good time with the sequel and they want it to be as enjoyable as possible for the audience, too.  Look for cameo appearances from such “classic” horror film posters as “Tourist Trap” and two Full Moon movies: “Subspecies” and “Vampire Journals” as subtle evidence.  Clearly, the filmmakers appreciate the fun side of genre cinema.

Part two kicks off by embracing the negative criticism of the first movie, in particular the ending, with a series of YouTube clips from fans posting their thoughts.  The jeers are balanced with an equal number of cheers, although “Grave Encounters 2” does not see itself so seriously that it cannot welcome a few punches at its own expense.  If anything, the film is almost too self-referential with deprecating humor, exemplified best by deriding The Vicious Brothers as nothing more than two butterfingered production assistants paid to do press for the original film.

Though the broader goal is to see if they can take the top scenes from the first film and triple the impact.  If beating and eating a dead rat induced a dry heave the first time around, wait until someone tries the same thing with a live rodent.  And the fourth floor room with the self-opening window has an even greater surprise in store for its new hapless victim.

The frights are still heavily reliant upon jump scares, and the digital FX are much bigger and more prominent on this go.  Spontaneous combustion and an entire hallway of doors shattering off their hinges highlight a pair of the most explosive moments.  In line with the goal stated above, “Grave Encounters 2” aims to be as in front and as out loud as possible.

While the jolts are still satisfying, the narrative thread is not as consistent, and trips over itself in more than one spot.  The extent of entertainment in the first act is largely restricted to juvenile comedy about teabagging drunk friends and farting while on a thermal vision camera.  Lead character Alex is also a drag.  Toss in a nondescript soundperson on the crew who materializes almost from thin air and you have a cast that needed as much attention as the setup was given.  (Mild SPOILER) A character from “Grave Encounters” makes a return as a raving lunatic who seems to be acting in a Tex Avery cartoon instead of a “found footage” film.  It is a few slight missteps like these that keep part two just under the entertainment level of the original.

Perusing reviews and message boards related to the first film reveals that some commenters had issues with the “otherworldly” aspect of the “Grave Encounters” climax.  Namely, they felt the Silent Hill-esque reality shifting of time and space asked too much from the suspension of disbelief.  Those taken out of the first movie’s setting by its surreal fantasy will only have more to dislike in “Grave Encounters 2.”  The sequel elevates the dream state of the first film tenfold with the inclusion of mystic gateways and supernaturally operated floating cameras.  Anyone requiring his/her fiction to have a firmer tether to reality has been warned.  Though really, anybody applying too much real-world logic to a movie about paranormal hauntings in the first place is doing it wrong.

The night before viewing “Grave Encounters 2,” I re-watched the original “Grave Encounters,” which is a double feature I do not recommend.  “Grave Encounters 2” keeps the “more of the same” scenes to a minimum, but a collective three hours is a lot of time to spend in this asylum.  Jump scares from night vision ghosts with gaping mouths lose their effectiveness after a while, so space these two movies apart for maximum enjoyment.

After only two films, “Grave Encounters” is now a franchise complete with its own iconic horror: black faced night vision ghosts with elongated maws.  “Grave Encounters 2” will not convert any new admirers out of those who shrugged their shoulders at its predecessor.  Meanwhile, “Grave Encounters” fans will see the new directions the sequel explores while retaining its own signature style.  It is not as well rounded as the first film, but give credit to John Poliquin and The Vicious Brothers for being unafraid to take chances.  The results are not always effective, although at least they are staying creative in a genre where others are content to remain stale.

Review Score:  70

---