Greystone Park

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.

I tend to try to find something to enjoy and appreciate in every single horror movie I watch no matter how mediocre it may be and yet I found this obscure film to be very boring most of the time and very frustrating when not boring. It has a somewhat interesting premise, director Sean Stone plays the lead character named Sean and the other cast members also play characters named after themselves; in other words, they all seem to play themselves. Even Oliver Stone also appears as Oliver, Sean's father. The movie starts with a dinner talk about ghosts and then three youths set out to explore an abandoned insane asylum and film their exploit. For about an hour, basically nothing worthwhile happens as they walk around inside the asylum. The setting is actually quite wonderful in itself and yet it simply serves the function of being a background for the three characters to argue among themselves, the line "let's get the hell out of here" is uttered periodically! Some false and some real scares occur in the last 20 minutes or so and yet they are quite mild.

I wish I could vote this movie zero. I wish I could go a step further and vote it into the negatives. The only problem there would remain that there aren't enough negative numbers to properly describe how bad this movie is. It's not scary, it's not artsy, it's not smart. It just hates you.

This movie hates you.

Got epilepsy? Have problems with vertigo? Are you a human being with eyeballs? This movie hates you.

The 'found footage' aspect of it was done in the worst way possible. And this is a pretty terrible aspect to start with. But when someone in the background is saying fervently, "See this? Oh man oh...oh my jeez man look at this!" and all I'm seeing is black and some flashes of unbearably bright light right in my eyeballs while the camera spins drunkenly around so badly I'm wondering if they didn't strap it to a cat on Ecstasy, kick the poor beast into traffic and say "Cut, print, beautiful!"? AWFUL.

Jesus, even in the simple walking-around scenes I was praying that they'd hold the goddamn camera still for half a second so I could empty the puke bucket. I had to close my eyes for a good ten minutes and try to follow the narrative by sound cues just so I didn't hurl my sandwich onto the carpet.

Which brings up the near total lack of narrative. I'm not going to spoil anything, because there's nothing -to- spoil. Hack film-makers with hack writers cooked up a half-baked concept with a bunch of meaningless 'twists' that M. Night Shyamalanadingdong would be embarrassed by that don't mean anything and looks like barfed up cat food on film.

Fellow Horror fans...do NOT watch this movie. This movie hates you. Because that's the only conceivable excuse I can think of for it even to exist.

I am afraid to say, that although I watched the film this evening, my brain found it hard to comprehend the dullness that was thrust upon it, and so images of the film are already leaking away as I type this so sorry for lack of info. I am a huge fan of found footage films, which is the reason I got this. I was hoping for at least Grave Encounters level of film but instead got college student attempt at horror film... My main problems with this film is that nothing much happens, they keep shouting at each other over naff all, and you can't see a bloody thing a lot of the time! I paid 8 quid to look at darkness while people shout. I could get the same effect by hiding in an alley at night and occasionally jumping out at people while screaming boo, for free! I am being rather nice with a 2, but if I gave it a 1 I would feel even more depressed about paying the amount I did for it...

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.