Grave Encounters (2011)

Dir: The Vicious Brothers (Colin Minihan, Stuart Ortiz)

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS opens with a word from executive producer Jerry Hartfield (Ben Wilkinson) that what we are about to watch is real. Jerry explains that Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson HARPER'S ISLAND), creator of the television series Grave Encounters, was filming episode six of the reality / ghost busting series for his company when something went horribly wrong. His company edited down the hours and hours of footage but otherwise didn't touch or enhance the footage. It's all real people!

Yes! It's a found footage / haunted house film. I really enjoyed this plot in the TALES FROM THE CRYPT episode TELEVISION TERROR from 1990. And a plot only gets better the more time you see it, right? Right?

Lance and his ghost busting crew, camera woman Sasha (Ashleigh Gryzko), tech guy Matt (Juan Riedinger) and cameraman T.C. (Merwin Mondesir) are shooting the episode at the Collingwood psychiatric hospital in Maryland. Closed since 1963, the hospital was headed by a doctor with a love for lobotomies who died at the hands of his patients. After filming the locals commenting on their spooky experiences, the crew and special guest psychic Houston (Mackenzie Gray) are locked inside to spend the next eight hours wandering the darkened corridors looking for ghosts.

And of course they find some ghosts.

Competently shot and featuring all the de rigueur jump scares, GRAVE ENCOUNTERS is yet another passable entry into an over crowded sub genre. The acting and writing are fine for this type of film but I tire of watching people walking down dark hallways while shakily holding a night vision camera. If it's more of the same you are looking for then seek out GRAVE ENCOUNTERS.

A sequel was released in 2012.

** out of ****

Stonehearst Asylum (2014)

aka: Eliza Graves
Dir: Brad Anderson

Doctor Edward Newgate (Jim Sturgess) trudges through the forest, a bit lost. It's Christmas Eve 1899 and he has left the University of Oxford after graduating to study and train at the remote and isolated Stonehearst Asylum. Hitching a ride on a horse drawn cart, he's dropped off at the asylum's gate and reluctantly greeted by the chief steward Mickey Finn (David HARRY POTTER's Prof. Lupin Thewlis). Finn unlocks the gate and leads Newgate into the asylum to meet with Doctor Silas Lamb (Ben Kingsley), the man in charge. Lamb takes Newgate on a tour of the facilities and Newgate is enamored at the sight of Eliza Graves (Kate UNDERWORLD Beckinsale) playing piano for the inmates. Graves is also an inmate. She suffers from hysteria and the touch of a man sends her into a fit. Newgate sets out to cure the beautiful, well spoken Graves, he wants to save her from her madness.

Lamb's methods are a bit unorthodox. Unlike Newgate, Lamb isn't trying to bring back the troubled minds in his care, his ideal isn't to save them but to allow their medical issues to flourish. A man who thinks he's a horse is given apples and groomed. The inmates dine with the staff. Chronic masterbators are given a free hand.

But something isn't right. Graves warns Newgate that he should leave the asylum but will not say why. And there's a curious tapping coming up the air vents from the lower level...

To say more would spoil the twist and though it is spelled out in the film's trailer and obvious to those who have been similar films and television programmes, mum's the word. I was surprised by the twist as I thought it too obvious and there there must be more to it. Director Brad (SESSION 9, THE MACHINIST) Anderson does a fine job with Joe Gangemi's script, based on a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, but with a run time approaching two hours there just isn't much to keep things going. The assembled cast is solid but only Kingsley's and Sturgess' characters have much to do. Brendan Gleeson has an extended cameo that serves as book ends for the twist. Michael Caine has a slightly larger role but one that seemingly is on hand only because of the twist, and to provide an explanation for it.

What is here is done well enough but it's all in service of a by the numbers story.

** out of ****