You're So Vicious

I have a several horror movies set aside for Ms. Spenser, and the list is kind of random. Also, I've sort of picked a lot of the best ones. Grave Encounters (2011) is kind of a leftover.

It is a found footage film, and it starts with a reality series producer explaining that what you are about to see is real, only edited for time. Right. It stars Sean Rogerson as the star and producer of the low-budget reality TV series Grave Encounters. For this episode, he is going to be locked in a haunted insane asylum with his crew of four: another ghost chaser, a camera operator, a surveillance tech, and a phony psychic. The psychic, Mackenzie Gray, is sort of a Criswell type, except he looks a lot like James Coburn. 

They start out by doing some interviews that are pretty lackluster. They even have to slip a groundskeeper $20 to say he's seen a ghost. Of course, the asylum is pretty gristly. The windows are all barred except one that keeps opening even if you lock it (according to one guy - not like we see it). There's a bathtub in the hydrotherapy room where a girl was supposed to have slit her wrists, and it still has stains - maybe rust, maybe blood. Anyway, they have the custodian lock them in overnight. They're stuck until he comes back at 6:00. 

They set up wireless cameras all over the large facility, get out their thermal detectors and microcassette recorders for EVP, and start checking the place out. It's pretty boring for a while, then little things start to happen. A gurney moves an inch on its wheels. They hear odd noises. Finally, an unseen force picks up a lock of someone's hair, and she freaks. Also, they got it on camera.

They all regroup at the foyer by the locked doors, and decide to just sit tight until morning. They've already got better stuff than any other show they've done. Around 5:00, they send the tech to gather up the cameras - and he doesn't come back.

It's well past 6:00 when the black guy in the crew snaps and decides he's going to break the door down and leave. After some argument, Rogerson helps. They break through, and find - more corridors. What used to be outside is just more asylum. There's no way out. Also, the sun should be up by now, but it's still pitch black out. Also, the lights in the asylum go out.

This is a pretty good gimmick, we thought. It goes on like this for a while: some demonic apparitions, someone gets pulled into the death bathtub, now full of blood, and disappears. They fall asleep and wake up with hospital wrist tags. The tech re-appears, but now he's in a medical gown and completely mad. And so forth.

The very end gets a bit nuts. I feel like they just didn't have an ending so they threw in everything they could think of - in about the last 2 minutes of before the credits.

And they never came back to the producer from the start of the movie, explaining how they got the tapes and what else they found. 

The "Vicious Brotherss", who wrote and directed, did a sequel, so maybe we find out then. We'll never know, because we aren't going to bother. This just wasn't that good.