GRAVE ENCOUNTERS

Funny story, I actually avoided watching “Grave Encounters” for a long time because the title screen looked like a cheap ripoff of the television show “Ghost Adventures”. Turns out it is — sort of — but while it does begin with a quite excellent parody of Zak Bagans (oh I just love you with your little gelled up hair and impossibly tight t-shirts and your penchant for calling ghosts “bro”) it quickly avalanches into a really scary found footage favorite.

The Grave Encounters team goes to an abandoned mental institution with a dark past (just like you’d see on “Ghost Adventures”) intending to do an overnight lockdown. However, unlike on “Ghost Adventures”, you see behind the scenes that the team doesn’t expect to find anything and are more than prepared to fake their way through an investigation. One of my favorite parts is when the Zak Bagans wannabe asks a landscaper if he’d ever seen a ghost; the gardener, with the last of the team’s petty cash in his pocket, points vaguely in one direction and says “Yes. Over there.”

But guess what, the asylum has other plans. When their lockdown is over, one of the crew members notices that while his watch reads 6am it’s still pitch dark outside. And also there’s no exit. And also HOLY FUCK SO MANY GHOSTS!

Watch this one in the dark. For real. It’s intense, the reactions are realistic, and while there are quite a few jump scares they’re actually well-executed. I made my husband watch it last summer for my birthday and he’s still mad at me for it.