10 Pint Movies: SHAKY CAMERA SHIT

Grave Encounters (2011)

Plot: Producer Jerry is telling us about "Grave Encounters", a newly piloted ghost-hunting reality television. Episodes 1 - 5 had gone down well in the edit & filming had begun for episode 6. No one has seen the "stars" since, hours of video footage had been found at the scene & we are going to see raw footage that has just been edited for time due to the masses of tape.

Lance Preston - Host & Ghost Hunter. Sasha Parker - Sexy Goth (cant really remember what her job was). T. C. - cameraman, Matt - engineer & Houston bullshit physic medium lurch & Pete Burns looking fucker are at Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital a nutter heaven for 80 years housing in its time over 18,000 of the Marylands finest mentally disturbed people. It had a checkered past the worst case being a doctor Arthur Friedkin, who had been performing hundreds of unethical experiments and lobotomies on the hospital patients before being killed by the patients themselves.

The crew want to see some errrrrr Paranormal Activity but have in there previous 5 episodes seen ziltch, but Lance is a semi pro he knows the trick with bullshit is how well you sell it & sell it he can interviewing people outside he sets the atmosphere even if it does mean a little bit of bribery.

The Caretaker lets them in & gives them the tour & Lance thinks hes hit pay-dirt the place is perfect, deserted Tunnels underneath. Baths where suicides had taken place (ghosts had been seen). For even more drama Lance asks the Caretaker to padlock them in the others aren't too impressed with that. Cameras are set up at the "hotspots" & things start of off as usual, meaning Jack shit so they decide to have a party for a bit. After a bit more wondering around we do start to hear things Old skool horror

banging noises, footsteps then the goth girl gets her hair felt the crew start shitting themselves apart from Lance who tries to escalate it. Houston tries some invoking the spirit bollocks.

Lance tells Matt to dismantle the cameras, (seriously in the deserted, pitch black tunnels after the hair touchy thing the words "Fuck" & "off" spring to mind) but he goes, gimp. Then shit starts to get weird people go missing mental & physical terror surrounds them & everyone thinks it was a fuckwits idea to lock themselves in.

Can they they escape, will the hospital let them go, who knows.

Is it good: Yes, I read some fuck awful reviews before giving in & watching it, perhaps this helped because in the end I thought it was great. Low expectations of a low budget, found footage film with bad reviews surely you can't go wrong. Well you can but not this time. The actors I admit, I didn't take to at first apart from Lance who seemed to capture a cocky bullshitter with a great presenting style. The Asylum/hospital is a fantastic setting, very creepy, grimy, abandoned & with great attention to detail such as the writing on the wall (of course that could have just been there anyway & they really where winging it), it reeks of fear & that's before you go into the tunnels.

There is a mix of fixed camera shots & handheld so it isn't as a much of a non stop braintwat as films like Area 407 & they are supposed to be recording the thing so they don't have to keep coming up with excuses why they are filming.

The build is slow but this works really well, it does have the feel of a documentary filmed by people winging it. The slow build up worked well for me although the hospital does seem to pick on the Goth chick quite a lot. The scares are well placed & little touches showing the hospital getting to them like waking up with hospital tags with their own name on was brilliant it isn't just loud noises & jumpy moments

The layers of fear in the film are excellent it feels like a bad acid trip , much like Room1408 (2007) which nearly killed me the first time I watched it got Flashbacks of Glastonbury 2000. A terror you can not escape from or that just could have been the Travis set.

Turdige: Low budget film but a couple of the FX where not great, even the darkness couldn't cover.

Overall: A great mix of Blair witch & Paranormal activity. I felt the overall feel & build up surpassed them both. Although I did watch both of them at the cinema breaking my own rules.
The trailer below has been viewed over 25 million times I wonder how many actually watched the film.

Directors: The Vicious Brothers, Cast: Sean Rogerson, Ashleigh Gryzko, Juan Riedinger, Merwin Mondesir, Mackenzie Gray

UK Bluray USA Buy/Rent(99c)

Grave Encounters II (2012)

Plot: Alex, is becoming obsessed with the film Grave Encounters (GE), probably since I gave it 8 out of 10, he seems to believe it wasn't just a cheap shaky cam found footage film but was actually real found footage. Alex the film student is from what I can discern after 5 minutes of the film is a bit of a prick though & so are his friends. Emails from "Death Awaits" (The graffiti scrawled of the entrance of Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital in GE) fuel his belief that the people in the film weren't actors (I think a lot of people would agree) but that the footage was real researching the people in it (They have all disappeared even those with bit parts caretaker historian have died) and traveling to meet the producer of GE (Who tells him Yup its all real) he agrees to meet "Death Awaits"at the hospital, which isn't not Collingwood but it a hospital somewhere in Canada.

This is now slightly confusing as being a film student Alex is making his own slasher torture Porn film, from the few minutes shown [a hot cheerleader is being abused] it looks better than this bollocks. Cheerleader is his girlfriend & wants to go with him Hmmmm If they believe this is real & have watched the people in it be killed by or driven insane by spirits in a hospital they can never escape from plus their bodies have never been found, so what in the wide wide world of sports would make you want to enter the place. It doesn't make sense like a wookie living with Ewoks.

Alex, girlfriend, roommate (or fuck face) fit gothy looking girl who goes with them for no particular reason & an Asian cameraman (Or ghost fodder) all go off to the Hospital
"Death Awaits" says he will meet them in the hospital at 3am (That's an invitation you could easily decline)

In the hospital its all cameras & ghosts pretty much errr Grave Encounters. Can they prove the original GE was real & do they really give a fuck when it all kicks off.

Is it good: OK. The idea for the follow up is kind of human centipede 2 & just like that its
defiantly not an improvement on the first. It is however not awful. People didn't like GE (Although reviews on IMDB have improved recently) they like this one even less.

Once inside its pretty much the same as GE, that's the plan to match what happened (same camera angles/same rooms) Im not sure whether this is good or bad is it what you want to see in a movie. When they finally enter the hospital it defiantly scaled up a notch lots of running, screaming & more specters. The story also develops so as not just being a carbon copy expanding on what is going on and why?

There are a few twists even one that makes it more like Room1408 (2007).

The effects seem better in parts

NHS cutbacks are putting a strain on Nurses

Turdige: The acting is not as good & the characters they play are less likable you cant wait for them to feel some pain. The build up is far to long for the simplicity of the script but considering the length of time you would think it would involve a conflict within him about whether its real or not & whether he should risk going but no he believes it from day one. Or trying to persuade the others along with him but no, they're happy to go & that bit is very rushed.

Overall: Not bad it had, a very low budget, type of silent hill feel with a bit of ring & even Nightmare on Elm Street 3 "Its a door". Although most of all it was like a worse version of Grave Encounters. Switch the lights of & it will still give you mild heart murmurs. Remember film everything

Director: John Poliquin Cast:Richard Harmon, Shawn C. Phillips and Jennica Fulton Stephanie Bennett Howie Lai

UK Bluray USA-Rent/Buy

Episode 50 (2011)

Plot: Skeptics Vs True believers. In the Red corner the Paranormal Inspectors (PI) a popular ghost investigation TV show, In the Blue corner the Academic Spirit Searcher’s Club (ASSC) Your usual God bothering demon believing head jobs.
Starting off we see Paranormal Inspectors Episode 49 we see the "Ghost Busters" at work, CCTV footage a guy twats his wife in the face with a hammer, unbelievably she lets him off when he says ghosts did it. Episode 49 is wrote off as rat droppings & paint fumes. A great excuse for serious domestic abuse.

The show was cancelled, Episode 50 has not seen UNTIL NOW.

Andrew Worthington celebrity gagillionaire, is dieing of cancer hes been a bit of a shit all his life buggering a underage antelope, stampeding cattle through the Vatican, saying nasty things a Twitter, so he's seriously worried about going to hell. His plan: let these losers enter West Virginia Insane Asylum which he has bought (The most Haunted place in the world the gateway to Hell) If they can debunk that place he might be safe as there probably isn't a Hell at all.

Usual shit, set up cameras around the spirit hotspots & shaky cam it up. They see a ghostly figure in the window within minutes, creepy laughing, bees attacking & mysterious disappearing Duct tape. Somethings defiantly wrong. The ASSC team pray & sceance there way through the night trying to invoke a spirit while the PI team can't really decide on what they believe in. Is it a demon infested shit hole or is it just some random residual electricity. Will they try & sabotage each other for the glory or will they team up for the greater good. Who cares.

Is it good: Not really. The concept is very good believers against debunkers. The acting is above US daytime soap standard but not by much. A lot of it is very pointlessly over dramatic take the bits around 40 mins in. Released the same year as Grave encounters maybe they called it Episode 50 because GE was only on Episode 6 it would seem like this had been around longer, cleaver, probably not.

Ghost Limbo

Turdige: The concept may be good but its all a bit sketchy as the PI believe in ghosts but not "In-humans" as part of an afterlife & can be explained scientifically Blah Blah Blah. If they outright didn't believe in any of it & they discovered the ASSC were using a few exorcist tricks but then shit started to get real it would had been much better. Also the main scary bit the fucked up nurse (which has the big build up) tortures one of the PI team but she doesn't seem really arsed about it she says it was her way of warning her. Er what!!!
The ending was beyond appalling. On a brighter note this makes the rest of the film seem like an Oscar winner.

Overall: The tag line says This is their final footage. It seems a a bit harsh the production company could have just cancelled the show if they thought it was crap they didn't have to kill everyone but I'm glad they did. Unfortunately this film had potential & it nowhere near reached it but its alright if you have a spare hour (Ive defiantly seen worse) In fact watch it before Ghost Encounters to make that look even better.

Director: Joe & Tess Smalley Cast: Josh Folan, Chris Perry, Natalie Wetta, Keithen Hergott and Eleanor Wilson

UK USA RENT/BUY

7 Nights of Darkness (2011)

Plot: Reality TV, some would say the lowest form of entertainment, pointless, puerile & other words beginning with P, errr Poo. This is however reality TV you can really buy into. 6 contestants sign up to stay in a abandoned, haunted asylum Madison Seminary The prize a share of $1 million if any can last the whole 7 nights. Apparently the episode never aired & this is was pieced together from the found footage, so the opening credits tell us so they're all fucked before we start.

Things go handheld straight away as the contestants are to film themselves, while engaging in tasks left by the producers,one for each night, and sleeping 2 to a room in darkness except for the cameras and a few torches.

A bunch of gobshites but aren't all reality TV show contestants, we have a mix of believers and non believers, loud mouths and a pair of nice tits (Who's from Beaver Creek nice touch), so were all set. Investigating the asylum Night 1 a bin moves, they play a few pranks on each other, Night 2 a seance & then it starts to kick off. The words Oh My God!! are used 3.4 billion times. Are the producers trying to mess them around, is there a plant among them, will anyone even get a dollar.

Must have had them reduced

Is it good: Yes, impressive especially if IMDB is to be believed and the budget was only $5,000. The acting for a start, although far from perfect, is an improvement on Episode 50 along with everything else, the feel/story/ending. The scares were well placed and the effects were errr effective. With such a small budget this is all limited but worked well. I was very tired when I watched it but it did creep the hell out of me at times.

Turdige: Although the acting is passable these are not professionals, however they don't really need to act as its reality TV so any kind of gibberish would be acceptable I'm sure most of it was ad-libbed. I suppose its an acting - non acting paradox like TOWIE. Day/Night 1 is a struggle there is a lot of shouting & speaking over each other its very annoying its a struggle to like any of them (apart from tits) but please bare with it. Plus tits hides them after Night 1 boooooo

Overall: Night 1 a bin moves Woooo, Night 2 a seance, Night 3 it gets genuinely creepy by Night 7 I had drowned in my own Vagina