Grave Encounters 2 (2012)

Running Time: 100 minutes

Release Date: October 2, 2012

Review by: Stacey

 

(remember that one time the GE2 poster looked exactly like the Quarantine poster?)

Grave Encounters 2 was definitely one of those movies that tried to cash in on the unexpected success of it's predecessor.  But as many sequels have shown us time and time again, this one failed to garner any kind of positive attention for the most part (especially from me).  I tried to go into this film with an open-mind as most reviewers should, but this one didn't give me much hope- and for good reason.

 

Once again written by The Vicious Brothers while giving the job of director to

John Poliquin, Grave Encounters 2 decided to go a different route than the first film and get all meta on us.  Film student Alex (Richard Harmon) is an aspiring director whose obsession with Grave Encounters has led him to believe that the events from the first film actually occurred.  Fueling his suspicions is a mysterious YouTube account named "deathawaits" (of course) that is sending him e-mails with coordinates to the actual asylum the first movie is reported to have taken place in.  With his sights set on making this into a documentary, he brings along several of his film school buddies in order to find out the truth.

For as much as I enjoyed the first Grave Encounters (click the title for review), I was positive I was going to like the sequel.  I was actually super bummed that I ended up disliking it as much as I did.  It's bad enough that you have to wait until you're almost 40 min into the film before you finally see them reach the asylum, but you also have to watch a cast that's largely unlikeable (the lead had a face that you only want to punch a lot.)

Admittedly, once you see the crew reach the asylum, the fun starts...but is short lived.  After a good 20-30 min of that, it all goes downhill as the story unravels into some pretty kooky bullshit- especially once you're re-introduced to a character from the first film.  When you think the film is going to just re-hash the events from the first (which it did A LOT of), Grave Encounters 2 threw a wrench in the spokes and tried way too hard to explain away a lot of the mysteries that gave the first GE its spooky factor.  Red doors to nowhere, floating cameras, people-sucking vortexes...it all becomes a bit much by the end.

Maybe the Vicious Brothers should have taken a cue from Blair Witch 2 and left the meta/self aware approach alone.  Where the simplicity in the first Grave Encounters made it a cult hit, the over-the-top storytelling in the sequel failed to do much other than make it look totally ridiculous.  Sometimes less is more, guys.

1.5/5 more wide-mouthed ghosts

Watch the trailer here!