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!