Grave Encounters 2 (2012) d. John Poliquin (Canada/US) (95 min)
Grave Encounters, written and directed by “The Vicious Brothers,” was a fairly standard found-footage flick about a gang of wannabe reality-TV ghost hunters exploring the “infamous” Collingwood mental institution. It had a few scares and generated a bit of buzz, but was nothing exceptional in the pantheon of POV horror. The sequel (penned by the VB and directed by Poliquin) earns a few more points, adopting a meta approach by having our main character Alex (Richard Harmon), a video blogger and an aspiring horror filmmaker himself, review the 2011 original whilst mocking anyone who believes the onscreen events to be (scoff) real. (Shades of Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows.) Of course, when he receives an anonymous online comment, insinuating there is more to the GE story than a simple low-budget venture, he rounds up his posse of insufferable film student pals and they head off to Collingwood to shoot their own documentary about the “maybe/maybe not” fictitious documentarians.
