Grave Encounters 2

I wasn't expecting much from this movie. I saw the first movie "Grave Encounters" and loved it. There were scenes in that movie that genuinely creeped me out and I was excited to see what they would do this time around.

John Poliquin directs the sequel, written by the original writers 'The Vicious Brothers'. Alex Wright, a film student is convinced that the first movie was in fact real and decides to visit the hospital where the film was shot to investigate for himself and shoot a documentary. How this happens though seemed improbable to me. Alex is busy shooting a student movie when he receives a mysterious video showing one of the actors from the grave encounters movie. It doesn't take much to convince him to drop everything including filming of his movie to fly to Vancouver Canada with a crew to visit the hospital.

It takes an exhausting 35 minutes before Alex and his crew actually reach the creepy hospital and it doesn't take long before things go wrong and they become trapped in the building.. The action starts to pick up a little then but I found the scares were too similar to the first movie. I got the feeling at times that the film was parodying itself. The characters often view scenes from the film and comment on "the lame CGI affects". And we are constantly reminded of the first film. For me though that had the effect of taking me out of the film a little.

I recommend the movie to fans of the first. I would have liked to see some more creative scares. There are no scenes that stick out for me and it lacked the level of tension that the first movie had.

The first Grave Encounters was a decent enough found footage horror flick that had just enough humor and jump scenes to make it a somewhat likable watch. This sequel follows a young filmmaker who is convinced the events depicted in the first Grave Encounters are real. He sets out with his crew in tow to make a documentary detailing his findings.

The problem with Grave Encounters 2 is it has lost any cool or fun factor from the original. This is a pretty much a bland rehashing with new, boring characters in the same, now boring setting of a closed down hospital.

The first Grave Encounters was a reminder that you can sometimes find something to like in a low budget, no name of a movie streaming on Netflix. Grave Encounters 2 is a reminder that most the low budget, no name movies streaming on Netflix suck.

This sequel takes everything that was decent about the first one and craps all over it.

Literally, it spends an hour and a half sucking itself off with the whole "The first movie was real!" nonsense. Plus, this time around, we've got weed-smoking college kids who laugh loud and scream even louder. The effects are better, but when all they do is show giant moronic zombies chasing after the camera with that clichéd distorted movement thing that made Kayako from The Grudge so creepy (but of course, it doesn't really work here), who cares? It's got the whole half-assed package of jump scares (complete with sudden loud noises edited into the footage) and none of the cleverness of the original (yes, the original at least had SOME clever ideas and stuff, but not that much). The movie is a chore to sit through, and you'll probably find yourself constantly checking the runtime to see how much longer you have to wait for the credits.

Give it a pass, or just watch the first one again. Or not. I guess it all depends on how productive you'd like to be during a quiet afternoon.

Grave Encounters wasn't all that original a found footage horror but, The Vicious Brothers did have some clever fun with the conventions and made an entertaining and spooky tale of a crew of a paranormal investigation show coming up against something they can't handle at an abandoned insane asylum. Sadly, all that cleverness and tongue in cheek creepy fun is gone for this uninspired sequel. Encounters 2 takes The Blair Witch 2 route and makes it a film about the film. Sadly the film also makes some of that sequels same mistakes. This time we have movie fan and amateur filmmaker, Alex Wright getting cryptic e-mails from a mysterious benefactor known only as Death Awaits. These messages hint that Grave Encounters was not just a movie, in fact it was quite real and the actors are all really missing. So, Alex grabs his camera and friends/crew and sets off to investigate. Bad idea. First problem is that this flick keeps the found footage motif yet, never at any time does it give us the vibe that it is actual footage and not just a movie. The film then tediously takes over 40 minutes to finally get our characters into the asylum, after a very "Catfish" first act, and once we're there, we are treated to a retread of Grave Encounters part 1 that also blatantly lifts scenes directly from previous found footage flicks like Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity. At least the previous flick did so with some cleverness. Maybe it's because The Vicious Brothers hand the directing reigns to John Poliquin who gives us a film that is populated with pretentious and annoying characters and comes across as very set up and phony instead of spooky and scary. But, he directs from their script so they share blame for what is obviously a sequel thrown together to take quick advantage of the minor attention the first film received. And it shows. Not only is the film lifeless and scare-less but, completely devoid of the cleverness and sly humor that garnered the first flick it's reputation. But, worst still, the final act descends into complete silliness when it introduces a character from the first flick into the mix and just falls apart. Add to that the flick is overlong at an hour and forty minutes and takes itself way too seriously. The Vicious Brothers knew they were having fun and let the audience in on it. Director Poliquin is trying to make a straight horror when the convoluted script desperately wants to wink at it's audience like the first film did. The recent Paranormal Activity 4 was accused by many as a lazy cash grab but, that film was at least still entertaining and gave us likable characters and had a nice sense of humor to give it some fun. Grave Encounters 2 doesn't even try. Disappointing follow-up especially considering The Vicious Brothers showed such potential in their first feature.

Not going to bore you, so let me be frank.

I really enjoyed it. Watch this film with no expectations in regards to the first and you will to. The problem is people expect way to much from these fairly low budget films. This film does its job, make you feel uneasy and some good scares. It makes me laugh when critics on here are like 'It was so boring, not scary at all, a waste of time' lol I bet you at some point in the movie they were like "s*&t!" lol.

Just stop trying so hard to hate and enjoy. I rate this a high 6/10, gave the first one 7/10.

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