ESP² - Fenomeni paranormali

As good as "Grave Encounters" was, "Grave Encounters 2" was that bad. It was a complete joke. You know a movie is bad when you're saying to yourself, "Won't they just hurry up and get killed so this nightmare can be over?" Every aspect of the film was a miserable failure.

The story. "Grave Encounters" is an actual movie in the movie! Some film students decide to go to the location of "Grave Encounters" in order to "find out the truth." And the main character, Alex (Richard Harmon), is being directed by e-mails from a mysterious person named "Death Awaits".

They used some absurd reason to drum up a part two. "Oh, lets go back to the creepy psych ward because it's all true and we have to prove it." So lame.

The script. Cheap. Should've been flushed. The dialog in there was so sophomoric.

The acting. Terrible. Part of the lure of the first "Grave Encounters" was the believability of it. Each character made sense and each character played their role well. In this movie these characters made zero sense and they put on like they were trying to be clichés.

The directing. I'm going to blame this on directing because I don't know who else to blame. Once you've realized that you are no longer in Kansas Dorothy shouldn't the cameras be the least of your worries? Do you really need to continue to film EVERYTHING! And that's one of the serious drawbacks of found footage films. There comes a point when it doesn't even follow human behavior to keep filming things.

The entire production. It was virtually a re-shoot of the first GE with a few little tweaks that were more harmful than helpful. There was nothing new (worth being in the movie), nothing fresh, nothing redeemable. It was lazy and pretty much like the majority of sequels: stale and uninspired.

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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I thoroughly enjoyed the first Grave Encounters. I think it's one of the best of the found footage movies I've ever seen. Granted, none of the actors were in danger of an Oscar nomination, but the characters were believable and got you involved in the story, the clichés were kept to a minimum, and most importantly, the atmosphere and the scares worked, and they held up to repeated viewings. Grave Encounters 2 should be renamed Grave Disappointment, imho. I spent the first twenty minutes having to double-check to make sure I had the right movie, and once the story actually got started, it seemed to me the movie couldn't make up its mind as to what it was trying to be. Parts of it felt like a spoof of the original, and parts felt like a shot-for-shot remake. There were blatant rip-offs of REC and Evil Dead 2, among others. The lead couldn't seem to make up his mind whether he was channeling Lance Preston's character from the first movie, or the kid from Terminator 2. The other characters were wooden or clichés, with a scream queen who made you want to scream every time she was in a scene. The one original element to the story line was another rip-off, this time of 1408. And the ending was absolutely pathetic, and unfortunately, strongly hinted at yet another travesty of a sequel.