Grave Encounters (2011) This Would Make A Great Haunted House Attraction

You know those haunted house attractions that pop up everywhere during the Halloween season?  Some are hokey, many are extremely creative.  Through my entire viewing of The Vicious Brothers' Grave Encounters, I kept thinking how sweet it would be if they could parlay the film into an actual haunted house one could brave on a crisp autumn evening.  I also kept thinking about how well the filmmakers skewered "reality ghost hunter" series as fame- and ratings-seekers.  Only in Grave Encounters, the question is asked, "what if one of those shows actually finds something?"

Continuing my unofficial "found footage month" here at the Helicopter, Grave Encounters slides right in as an entry in that genre, as nearly the entire film is told through footage that was "found" at an abandoned insane asylum and, as a concerned television executive tells us in the few moments that are not in first-person, "altered in any way."  Although this subgenre is starting to saturate the market just a tad, I'm still interested in it.  Although I had slightly lower expectations for this film, I was pleasantly surprised at how fun it was.

Written and directed by the awesomely-named Vicious Brothers (Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz), the film sets us up with premise that a film crew producing the latest episode of a ghost-hunting reality show called - as you may guess - "Grave Encounters."  An executive lets us know in documentary format that the crew has disappeared and what we're about to watch is an edited, yet undoctored account of what happened to them.  We then meet the leader of the team, Lance (Sean Rogerson) who bears an uncanny...hell, an obvious resemblance to that spiked-hair muscle guy on "Ghost Adventures."  His mannerisms in front of the camera had me laughing since I'm so entertained by the antics of the real show, it seemed like a parody-homage.  To investigate the supposedly haunted asylum, he brings his team of camera man T.C. (Merwin Mondesir), occult expert Sasha (Ashleigh Gryzko), tech guy Matt (Juan Riedinger), and psychic Houston (Mackenzie Gray).  Early on, the on-camera facades drop and we see that Lance and his team hardly believe in the paranormal - the whole thing is about ratings and of course, money.  Lance is obsessed with the show being successful, and Houston is hardly a real psychic, just an actor who complains that the overnight taping session might cut into his auditions.  They even pose like a hip paranormal investigation team.  They're ready-made for fame.

But strange things begin to happen over the night, at first nothing overly alarming.  But when Matt goes upstairs to investigate a window that moved during the night, it kicks off something that ranges from mysterious (his disappearance) to the terrifyingly surreal (what the team finds when they finally open the front doors).  Although they're not locked in anymore, they can't leave.  The asylum itself becomes an antagonist.  Maps and directions mean nothing.  Doesn't matter that their clocks say it's daytime...outside the windows, it's still dark.  Horrifying apparitions appear and the party is separated in the pitch black.  One by one, the crew is picked off in chilling ways.  I won't spoil how they go down, but I will say I found T.C.'s fate especially creepy.  Eventually, it's down to just Lance, exhausted and alone.  At the end of his rope, it's as if the asylum allows him to glimpse answers to long-standing questions about the nefarious doctor who likely created the restless spirits before handing him over to his doom.

Unlike Skew, the found footage film I reviewed recently, Grave Encounters isn't deeply layered.  There's no symbolism or puzzles you need to solve, not even a breathtaking final shot to nestle itself in your brain.  Grave Encounters is straightforward and wild, a walk through a haunted house not unlike some of the better Halloween attractions out there.  It's not fancy, but it manages to hold the interest and entertain with no small amount of flair and nods to a slew of urban legends.  Rogerson is excellent as the central character, and his Lance is intense, brash, and slightly unlikeable.  He demands his crew follow him, even when things get insane.  One standout for me was Gray as Houston, the over-dramatic, cowardly psychic.  He's so over-the-top when he's "on camera" for the show, displaying his "powers," but a fame-seeking diva when he's not.  I found him to be both hysterical and interesting by playing both sides of that coin.

Overall, the film is a lot of fun, not nearly as bad as I thought it might be...don't ask me why I thought it would be bad.  I guess I thought I was due for a dud, but I was happy to find I really enjoyed Grave Encounters. 

So give it a try, and you'll see what I mean:  making this a haunted house tourist attraction would be money in the bank. Charge admission at the door, gift shop on the way out. Money, I tell you.

Roots Of Personal Horror, Volume 1

There have been a lot of factors that lead to my love of the horror genre. Everything from my fascination by the original "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" series to collecting ghost stories contributed something along the way. It's no secret that I have an affinity for apocalyptic revenant or infection fiction. You know, that unstoppable juggernaut of disease that might only spare a few lucky sociological experiments. However, it doesn't take away from my love of supernatural fiction, especially when it involves ghostly, often abandoned, locales.

I may have always been enamored with abandoned places, especially businesses or even spookier, services like hospitals or - gulp - asylums. I don't know. I have always imagined what history they had - they're ghosts with walls. But I can trace back to an adventure on wintry night in Northville, Michigan, when it took root in my subconscious for good.

One of my very best friends, Keith, lived near Detroit and often told us tales of childhood shenanigans. One such set of shenanigans involved sneaking into an enormous complex of abandoned buildings that were once the Wayne County Training School for Feeble-Minded Children. Yeah, you read that right. Try getting away with that kind of name these days. Or don't, because it's not cool. But back in the 1920's, that's what passed for a serious name. To Detroit residents, it was known by the much shorter, much more politically correct, "The Tunnels." This name was a result of the method by which one gets around in there without being detected: the steam tunnels connecting all the major buildings.


One weekend, Keith and I were joined by Ric, another of my very best friends and roommates, and made the trip to Keith's home for the weekend. There, we met up with Jim, Keith's childhood friend who knew The Tunnels like the back of his hand. It was a dreary, hazy winter night. Snow on the ground, slight rain glossing it with an icy sheen. We weren't even there yet, and it was surreal.

The first thing we did was hide from a train. Talk about a bunch of grown men acting like kids in the 1940's, we were that. Plus, we were going into an area that was forbidden. To get caught at that time was a substantial fine for trespassing. We had no intention of vandalizing anything, but the police don't care. Approaching through the woods, we found the first building and in that strange night, our flashlights and the fuzz-toned moon in the sky the only source of light, it looked like ghostly past and post-atomic future all in one.

My mind reeled. I got scared. And then I fell in love.

Old buildings with rust and brick and decay and graffiti, derelicts beached by history. I imagined: what was their purpose? What kind of person worked or lived inside the walls? What ghosts remained?

Jim took us inside the first one, then down into the tunnels themselves. Cramped, we could only go single file in the absolute and pure darkness. There was real danger. Maybe Jim didn't know every nook and cranny of the place. And there were a lot of those. Gangs had been known to frequent the place. We'd heard tales of an LSD-riddled girl trapped down there for who-knows-how-long. When Ric's flashlight started flickering, it was icing on the adrenaline cake.


The everyday trappings of society were everywhere, too. There was a bowling alley in the activity center. We found a pool. A theater. Rooms, beds, desks, even canisters filled with food in the fallout shelter. It was like we'd found a place frozen forever in time, aided by the cold winter air. So quiet, too. Only our voices and the wind, and that was fairly calm.

We saw some other things, too. A blue light moving past a set of windows. Looked at straight on by all of us. No road nearby, so it wasn't headlights. It may have been something entirely innocent, but we've always liked to think it was something else. There was also ominous, telling, and often hilarious graffiti. One scrawled message blurted out "Hail Satin!" I guess we were to praise fabric.

It was a real adventure, almost like the kind The Goonies have, only much less dangerous and marketable. But the images I came away with have stuck with me for years since then. I still dream of underground tunnels, ghostly feelings, and empty places. They aren't nightmares. They're sleep gold.

Much like the horror genre binds many of us as friends, the thrill of The Tunnels binds anyone who visited them. They're gone now, but those who experienced it even once still talk about it. As a wrestling insider in Detroit for a few years, all I had to say was "remember The Tunnels?" and it became a campfire story-fest backstage. Keith, Ric, and I still talk about it to this day. And we toast the memory of Jim, who passed away several years after. He was a really, really good guy.

The abandoned asylum and good friends. The rush of doing something we shouldn't and seeing things that were pieces of history. There is no doubt it contributed to my horror palate.

For some great pictures (which is where I got the two above) try this link at Forgotten Michigan. For more information, including maps, try this link at Northville Tunnels.

Thanks for reading this long post, fellow survivors. See you next time...