Greystone Park

I am a huge fan of 'found footage' horror films, not because there are many good ones about but because I love that style of horror, I think it is truly terrifying when done right. I think anyone who watches such films should take them for what they are and not compare them to bigger budget horror films, or other films generally.

Greystone Park (GP) is nowhere near the best found footage film I've seen, but is not the worst either. It is a poor film but I think some of the reviews are a bit too harsh. The acting in these films is never going to be great, but in GP it is fine for the purposes. It is set in a genuinely scary ex-asylum and there are some great freaky moments, such as the discovery of a creepy giant doll and one of the characters inexplicably laughing at strange times. The film sets up a really great, scary atmosphere but falls flat on its face when we get very poor, confused dialogue between the characters, too much shouting and swearing, and way too much of the shaky-camera business. The ending is also very confusing.

I would say that found-footage fans should give it a watch, they may just like it, but for anyone who is not a big fan of the genre I would give it a big miss and spend your precious film-watching time on the better films like The Poughkeepsie Tapes, Evil Things and the first 3 Paranormal Activities.

I am an aspiring filmmaker and a fan of 'found footage' films such as 'Chronicle, Cloverfield and The Blair Witch Project'. I went to see this film in Dubai with zero or no expectations at all having not heard any negative or positive reviews.

If I were to give the review in a nutshell, it would be "Nothing". The film makers dwell in to a mental hospital with a hand-held shaky cam trying to film the supernatural in the supposed 'Haunted Hospital'. What we are shown during the length of the film are poorly lit and edited clips coupled with awful sound bytes that do nothing for the film.

I wish Sean Stone the best of luck for the future but in my opinion, this film should have been a short 20 minute submission to perhaps an indie film festival.

Greystone Park has to be one of the least engaging films I've ever seen. Immediatly from the outset I was drawn to it as much as I am fire, acid or something really really pointy.

It's yet another found footage-esque film where a group of folks interested in documenting supernatural activity break into an asylum and.......serious dejavu.

This cost over half a million dollars to make and I'd love someone to explain to me where the money went. Was everyone overpaid? Did they have fantastic catering? Were all the cast put up in 5* hotels with travel covered and a personal masseuse? Maybe champagne and caviar for everyone in between takes? Because it sure as hell didn't go on the production.

I've seen some real stinkers in this genre, and let's be honest most of them are the same movie recycled over and over again. But this is right up there! Again it's un-engaging, it's boring, it's stupidly dark, it has pathetic character development and as is commonly the case nothing ruddy happens!

Pitiful, embarassing and yet another carbon copy movie just done worse than even usual.

The Good:

Nope

The Bad:

Seen it all before, all of it

Annoyingly dark

Poorly made from start to finish

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Maybe the budget was spent on silk toilet roll?

I'm thinking about changing my user name to "Bad movie watcher" because of my incredible and uncanny ability to watch bad movies through to completion. There have been the occasional stinkers that I couldn't bear and turned off midway, but by and large I gut it out.

This bad movie is a found footage film taking place in an abandoned mental hospital. To use a baseball term, the movie starts off in the hole with an 0-2 count.

Although found footage films have significantly improved over the years, this one is of the type I can't stand. This is the single camera, POV, amateur video. So, what do you get with that? Quick scans, out of focus, and shaky. Then, whoever edited it made it more unwatchable with constant cuts from shot to shot. It's enough to give you a headache. There were plenty of times when I didn't know who was holding the camera because different people would be in the shot when they weren't before. And tell me, how does a found footage video have a musical overlay for intensity? Granted it was subtle and brief but it still detracts from the overall principle.

The movie took too long to get going and offered very little in the scare department. Ultimately, you had three ghost seeking youngsters that found just that and paid the price. It was all rather cliché. At one point, at the beginning of the movie, someone even said: "This is how all horror movies start," when commenting on a ominous shot of some old homes--almost as if the movie was making fun of itself. Really poor taste.

There's nothing cutting edge, nothing original, nothing redeemable about this movie. I'll stay away from the overused: "That's (x amount of my time) of my life I can't get back," because I made the choice to watch it. But what baffles me is: what is cool as a stunt isn't always cool as a movie. Why did they think this could make a good film? "Greystone Park" could've done a lot better as a 15 minute YouTube clip.

As much as I dislike these shoddy shot movies with their questionable camera work and their supposedly "found footage" concept, then "Greystone Park" (aka "The Asylum Tapes") is definitely in the top five of the more boring and pointless movies in the genre that I have had the misfortune to stumble upon.

The story here, is as in so many other low budget movies, about a group of people venturing into a run-down, old, abandoned mental institution (or asylum, if you will) to investigate some alleged rumors about it being haunted.

Right, that is perhaps one of the most used and generic of story lines in the history of horror movies. And you'd think with so many movies with the same storyline that there would be a bigger chance for someone to actually get the recipe just right. You would, wouldn't you? Indeed, but "Greystone Park" swung and missed widely.

The movie is mostly just questionable camera work that was all over the place, and randomly interrupted by static noise to make the atmosphere seem all the more ghastly and scary. But it just didn't work. The movie came off as horribly rushed and forcefully pushed together in what seemed like an array of random clips.

I will say that the setting of the movie was actually what worked out the best for the movie. Although you'd think that a run-down and closed down mental institution would have its equipment and gear long looted and gone. But oddly enough, a lot of things were still there. Which just didn't really seem all that believable.

As for the acting, well people actually did good enough jobs with their given roles, although they were struggling hard having no proper storyline to work with.

If you enjoy these types of movies, perhaps you can find something enjoyable here, as I failed to. If you, like me, want to be properly entertained by a movie with proper camera work, then you are better off looking elsewhere.