Grave Encounters

 Released Year: 2011

Directed by The Vicious Brothers

Casted by:

Sean Rogerson as Lance Preston

Ashleigh Gryzko as Sasha Parker

Merwin Mondesir as T. C. Gibson

Mackenzie Gray as Houston Grey

Juan Riedinger as Matt White

 Story:

The film begins with Jerry Hartfield the producer of Grave Encounters, a famous ghost investigation television series. Jerry explains the premise of Grave Encounters and introduces the host, Lance Preston. Preston explains that he started the TV series because he lived in a haunted house as a child and now he travels around the world looking for paranormal evidence. Hartfield explains that Grave Encounters was cancelled after the fifth episode, when the footage for episode six mysteriously went missing. The footage was finally recovered in 2010 and brought to Hartfield.

The film stars Lance Preston, Sasha Parker, an occult specialist, Matt White, cameraman T.C Gibson and Houston Grey. They were investigating the abandoned Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital. For over 68 years, until the hospital was closed in 1963, an estimated 80,000 patients were treated. Since its closure, many instances of paranormal activity had been reported there.

The hospital's caretaker let the film makers into the locked building, through doors above which are inscribed 'Death Awaits'. The caretaker gives them a tour of the hospital, including an empty bathroom where a female patient committed suicide in a bathtub, a window on the top floor that opens by itself, a hallway said to be haunted by a bald man in a lab coat, and a room with writing on the walls.

Later that night, the Grave Encounters crew set up their equipment and began an overnight surveillance while locked inside hospital. Splitting up to investigate, Lance's group unsuccessfully tries to contact the bathroom suicide girl. At 2:10 a.m, the team reconvenes in the lobby. All their equipment shows nothing unusual, except for a fourth floor camera, which shows the window opening, but none of the crew notices it. Later, cameraman T.C Gibson continued to film the hospital's corridors. Gibson is interrupted by his cell phone and while talking, misses a wheelchair moving by itself down the corridor. He feels a cold spot and enters a room, but is surprised when the door slams shut. Gibson assumes this was a prank, but after looking for someone from his team, he realizes he's alone. Gibson shows the footage to the rest of the team and they attempt to communicate with whatever made the door shut. They are unsuccessful, but Preston hears a loud bang coming from elsewhere. The team investigated the noise, entering into a room where the hospital trolley wheels spin by themselves. They also see a bed turned over in the corner of the room.They then heard loud footsteps from the floor above. Sasha, decides to perform an EVP session upstairs. An unexplained noise is heard and some of Sasha’s hair is lifted by an unseen hand. Preston discovers apparitions and orbs in the pictures he took during this occurrence.

At 4:51 a.m, Lance tells Matt to gather all of the remaining cameras set around the hospital. White collects the night vision cameras, but when he reaches the fourth floor, he finds the window open. Sensing that this is important, White tries to contact Lance to investigate. He then hears a loud bang and goes to investigate.

At 5:32 a.m Lance notices that Matt is still gone, but is unsuccessful in reaching him on the radio. Sasha thinks White is hurt somewhere in the darkness and she insists on looking for him. Lance and Gibson agreed, leaving Houston alone in the lobby. Lance, Sasha and Gibson find White's equipment sprawled out on the fourth floor. The team decides to split up to find White as quickly as possible. While searching, Gibson climbs the stairs, but is startled by a loud noise and is pushed from behind. He is injured in the fall down the stairs and calls to the rest of the team, who take him to the lobby.

At 6:19 a.m, Gibson unsuccessfully tries to open the hospital's doors. He tries to call the groundskeeper but finds there is no cellphone reception. Suddenly, the doors open, but not to the outside. Instead, they lead to another hospital corridor. They find a new exit, but that, too, leads to another corridor. Confused and scared, Lance asks Sasha what time it is. Sasha finds that it is 8:34 a.m. Although the sun was to rise at 7:45 a.m, it was still dark outside. After finding no escape from the hospital, the team heads back to the lobby to try and sleep.

A loud crash wakes the team hours later. Lance tells everyone it is 8:00 pm, they had slept for seven hours. Lance opens the cooler to find all of the food had rotted and was infested with maggots, after only a few hours. Gibson has the idea of escaping using the fire escape. As the team walks the corridors they hear more loud bangs. Gibson locates the fire escape, but finds only a concrete wall behind the door. Suddenly, they hear screaming that could be the missing White. The team follows the screams to a room where a cot is thrown across the room and a bed is suspended in midair. Terrified, they hide in a different room. Lance explains to the camera that the corridors keep changing.

After falling asleep again, the team wakes up to find that the word 'HELLO' scratched into Sasha's back. Lance then hears White on the radio, but it is cut off. The team realizes that White is alive somewhere in the hospital, and so they search for him once more. They see a distant shadow running down the corridor and thinking it is White, they follow it to another room. The figure is not White, but a girl standing and facing the corner. Lance attempts to talk to her, but she turns around and reveals a terrifying, screaming face. The team runs away, but Houston is left behind when the flashlight dies. He is shown on one of the corridor cameras wandering around trying to find the others. Suddenly, he is hoisted into the air, semi-strangled and then dropped to the floor. When he tries to get up, a strange explosion sends his body flying violently down the corridor, killing him on impact.

Gibson, Sasha and Lance hide in another room and realize that they now have patient I.D. wristbands. They decide to look for both White and Grey. Sasha is grabbed by a ghostly hand which breaks through the window panel in a door behind her and soon feels weak. The team finds White in a room, wearing a hospital gown. White, who appears mentally unstable at this point, claims to know a way out of the hospital. To leave, the team just has to get better. Sasha falls asleep and is again attacked by arms coming out of the walls. They flee and hide in the bathroom. Lance hears water dripping and sees the bathtub is now filled with blood. Matt is curiously looking over the bathtub. Gibson tries to pull Matt away, but is grabbed into the bathtub by a female apparition. Sasha and Lance immediately flip the tub over, but Gibson is gone.

Sasha, White and Lance continue looking for an exit. They find an out-of-order elevator, but cannot open the door. Lance looks for something to pry open the door. He looks in the room with writing on the walls and grabs a metal rod from a bed, but notices a puddle of blood with a human tongue in it. When he looks up, a bald patient stares at him and screams. Lance escapes from the demon and manages to pry open the elevator. The patient then attacks Lance, but Sasha helps keep the demon away. White leans forward to look down the elevator shaft and carries on leaning until he falls, committing suicide. The demon disappears, so Sasha and Lance climb down a ladder to the bottom of the shaft and find that White is dead. Lance then pries open a door to a service tunnel. Later in the tunnel, Sasha becomes violently sick and starts throwing up blood. Noticing that she could not keep up, Lance decides they should stop and rest.

A heavy mist covers them as they sleep in the tunnel. When the mist clears, Sasha is gone. Lance is left alone in the dark. His mental health spirals out of control and he stops filming. Lance turns the camera back on after finding a door to an operating room. This was the secret operating room of Dr. Arthur Friedkin, who performed unethical experiments on Collingwood's patients. Lance finds pictures of patients being experimented on, along with pictures of the Grave Encounters team also being experimented on. Lance also finds evidence of satanic rituals and black magic which Friedkin performed. Lance then sees Friedkin and several nurses performing a lobotomy on one of the team members. Rushing forward, Lance trips on a skull and as he looks up, Friedkin is looking down on him. The camera then falls and Lance's screams before the camera cuts out. Again, the camera is turned back on, showing Lance is still alive, although his eye is bleeding from a lobotomy. Lance's final words were ‘He said I’m all better now. I can finally go home. For Grave Encounters, Lance Preston. Signing off.’ The camera then cuts out.  

 L² Scored: 9/10

L² Comment: 

Oh my fucking gaga, this movie really fucking freaked me out! I always love this kind of documentary style of horror movie, and this is just as good as the paranormal~ yikes!

The Prodigies

 Released Year: 2011

Directed by Antoine Charreyron

Voiced by:

Unknown

 Story:

 Ten year old Jimbo Farrar is a gifted child who is misunderstood and regularly beaten by his parents. One day he is badly beaten by his father while his mother cheers him on. Jimbo is carried away by his anger and loses control of his abilities, when he wakes up he finds his mother was beaten to death by his father who then hanged himself.

Locked in a psychiatric hospital, Jimbo is visited by the billionaire Mr. Killian, who decides to take him under his wing to teach him how to control his abilities.

Twenty years later, Jimbo Farrar is a brilliant scholar working in the Mr. Killian Foundation for Gifted Children, and married to anchorwoman Ann, who is pregnant with his child. He creates an extremely complex online game to find young children who have abilities like him.

Five unrelated teens solve the game and hack into the system to ask "where are you?. Jimbo leaves to recruit the teens, who are from various backgrounds, to go enroll at the Foundation. He finds when he returns that Killian has died. The Foundation is now controlled by Melanie, Killian's daughter, who doesn't want Jimbo to continue recruiting new candidates. Jimbo has the idea of ​​instead creating a televised competition to find future geniuses. The gameshow is used to bring in the five recruits Jimbo already has: Gil, an abused child; Liza, a young girl training to be a supermodel; Lee, an Asian girl who helps at her parents' store; Harry , an African American whose mother has a gambling problem; and Sammy, the overweight son of a wealthy family.

The five identify each other immediately and meet secretly in Central Park. No sooner are they together that two thugs assault Liza. Jimbo did not go to the meeting since he learned that Ann is pregnant and chose to be with her. He gets a message and mentally connects with the Five. He scares away the thugs before he finds Lisa in a coma and everyone else in shock. The next day he learns that Melanie wants to cover the incident up. Furious, he demands an explanation. Melanie fires him since he was her father's favorite and not her. Jimbo swears to protect other four and locks himself up, afraid he might get as angry as he did the day his parents died.

Under the leadership of Gil, the four friends infiltrate the archives of the Killian group where they find the recordings of Jimbo when he was in the hospital. He talks about his mental abilities and other "child-kings" who had the same (Killian was one). Gil, Sammy Lee and Harry avenge Liza, by killing the two thugs. But they also kill the police officer who covered it up and his wife, using their powers to take over the bodies of others.

Jimbo does not know what to do: Melanie refuses to let the game continue, but teenagers are demanding justice. One evening, while he tries to reason with the four friends, Jimbo finds they doubt him and put him to the test by ordering him to kill Jenkins. Jimbo, having promised young Killian to stop using this power, refuses. So they kill Jenkins themselves and put the blame on Jimbo, who quietly goes to jail. When Liza wakes up from the coma, Ann asks for her for help, but the girl uses her power over the baby. It is up to Melanie, to organize the final genius competition at the White House, attended by the President of the United States. When Jimbo discovers Ann's betrayal, he uses his power to break out of jail and join Liza in getting to the children, Melanie Ann and the White House.

At the White House Liza triggers a security plan where everyone in the Oval Office is sent to a secure bunker. Once locked in the four children manipulate the soldiers and bodyguards who begin killing everyone. Gil launches an atomic bomb at the Killian campus. Jimbo finally managed to join them in the bunker, where he realizes that Gil heads the group. The two clash in a battle of powers, but then Jimbo gets shot. While Jimbo lays dying, Harry convinces his friends to stop, forcing Gil to cancel the nuclear missiles. Jimbo dies shortly after.

Three months later, the Killian group is bankrupt. Pregnant Ann receives a package with a video message from Jimbo before he died. Liza left it before she disappeared with Harry and Sammy Lee in search of other "child-kings".

L² Scored: 10/10

L² Comment:

I can't stop myself for giving a full marks for this animation. This is real good and fascinating, its a bit shame of me for not able to find who is the one who voiced for the characters. The whole film is so exciting and each scene is breathtaking. Of course a lot of scene cannot be done if human beings is the main characters, that's why all these cool animation appeared~ bravo

Red Riding Hood

 Released Year: 2011

Directed by Catherine Hardwicke

Casted by:

 Amanda Seyfried as Valerie 

Shiloh Fernandez as Peter 

Max Irons as Henry Lazar
Billy Burke as Cesaire
Julie Christie as Grandmother
Gary Oldman as Father Solomon

 Story:

 Valerie is a young woman who lives in the village of Daggerhorn, on the edge of a forest plagued by a werewolf, with her parents, Cesaireand Suzette. She is in love with the woodcutter Peter, but her parents have arranged for her to marry Henry Lazar, son of the wealthy blacksmith Adrian Lazar. Valerie and Peter plan to run away together, only to learn that the Wolf has broken its truce not to prey on the townspeople in exchange for cattlestock sacrifices and has murdered Valerie's older sister, Lucie, whom Valerie discovers was the illegitimate daughter of Adrian, with whom Suzette had an extra-marital affair. It is also revealed that Lucie had a crush on Henry.

Father August, the local preacher, calls the famous witch hunter Father Solomon to help them, but the townspeople decide to venture into the Wolf's lair to destroy it. There they divide into groups, with one consisted of Peter, Henry and Adrian. Peter separates from them moments before the Wolf attacks and murders Adrian. However, it is cornered by the men and killed.

The following day, as the people celebrate, Father Solomon arrives and reveals that, had they killed the Wolf, it would have returned to its human form, and what they slew was a common grey wolf. He also reveals that they've entered the Blood Moon Week, an event that happens every 13 years, in which whoever is bitten by the Wolf is cursed to become one as well. Father Solomon's men, led by The Captain, isolate Daggerhorn and begin to investigate its people in search of the wolf.

That night, during a celebration, the Wolf attacks and, while the townspeople rush to the Church (as the wolf is unable to step into holy ground), Valerie and her friend Roxanne venture in the village alone to search for Roxanne's autistic brother, Claude but are cornered by the creature, which telepathically communicates with Valerie and threatens to kill Roxanne and destroy the village if Valerie doesn't leave with it. The Wolf then escapes, vowing to return to learn Valerie's decision. During the encounter, Valerie notes that the Wolf has brown human eyes.

The following day, Claude is captured by Father Solomon's men. Having witnessed Claude performing a card trick earlier, Father Solomon claims he's a student of the dark arts and attempts to force the frightned Claude to reveal the Wolf's identity. When Claude is unable to do so, Father Solomon locks him up in a brazen bull. Roxanne reveals that Valerie is able to communicate with the Wolf in exchange for Claude's release, but he is already dead by the time the Captain opens the bull.

Believing Valerie to be a witch, Father Solomon has her captured and displayed at the town's square in order to lure the Wolf out so he can kill it. Henry and Peter, however, join forces and help Valerie to escape. However, Peter is captured by the Captain and thrown into the brazen bull, while Father Solomon orders Henry to be killed for helping Valerie. Father Auguste saves Henry and is then killed by Father Solomon.

Henry takes Valerie to the church, but they are attacked by the Wolf, who bites off Father Solomon's hand, which contains silver-coated fingernails. The townspeople, especially Valerie's friends, shield her from the Wolf, who is once again forced to flee. Valerie is taken to the hospital, where she becomes convinced that the Wolf is her Grandmother, who lives in a cabin in the nearby woods. Meanwhile, Father Solomon, having also been cursed, is killed by Captain, who earlier had his brother killed by Father Solomon after being bitten.

After retrieving Father Solomon's hand, Valerie rushes to her Grandmother's cabin, but is confronted on the way by Peter. Noticing that his hand is burned in the same place where the Wolf burned its paw trying to enter the church, Valerie assumes Peter is the Wolf and stabs him.

Arriving at Grandmother's house, Valerie is horrified to find her dead, and learns that the Wolf is her father, Cesaire. He reveals that the curse was passed to him by his father, and he intented to pass it on to his firstborn, Lucie. However, upon confronting her, he couldn't communicate with her, and, realizing she was not his daughter, murdered her in a fit of rage. He then took revenge against Adrian, his wife's lover, and now wants Valerie to accept the curse and become like him. Valerie refuses, just as Peter appears and confronts Cesaire, who bites Peter. Valerie stabs Cesaire to death with Father Solomon's hand, and dumps the body in the river with Peter's help.

Peter departs in order to learn how to control his curse, vowing to return only when he's able to ensure Valerie's safety. Valerie then moves to her grandmother's house, leaving her old life behind, and finally reunites with Peter several years later, when he returns, now the new Wolf.

L² Scored: 8/10

L² Comment:

This is quite a good movie i should say, i love the way they amend our folk tales with a little bit of excitement and romance into it. Of course, i think everyone expected the production team will change the big grey wolf into a werewolf as it brings more dark fantasy to the audience. But i don't understand why Leonardo Di Carpio (the producer) chose Amanda Seyfried as the red riding hood. I fucking hate her :P