Grave Encounters (2011)

I am not sure if I should call myself a horror movie fan, because I haven’t seen a lot of horror films due to their cliché-ness, but I’d say that I sometimes enjoy thriller films and horror documentaries. For this new entry for our upcoming Halloween holidays, we will be discussing (or dissing) some horror films that I’ve seen in my life (and how I feel about them.)

The first horror movie that I’ve ever seen was the American version of The Ring. The Ring was quite famous in the 2000’s, about a girl with a weird family, who was thrown in a well, then there was a cursed VHS tape containing some weird and controversial still videos that went “viral” on that time (Facebook was not yet in the scene), then people who have seen it will die with their distorted faces. And then of course there was our heroine who will try to break the curse by investigating how the ghost girl died or what have really happened.

 

I was only seven years old when I’ve seen that movie… ALONE. I was home alone. Of course I was scared and it gave me nightmares for 1 week. But after 4 years I tried to watch it again, ALONE. But instead of feeling scared, I just noticed some annoying clichés like “brave” white people will still be doing things that they shouldn’t do, not believing in the terrifying things that are actually happening, problematic lead characters being so fearless that he/she will sacrifice everything just to break the freaking curse, going through some haunted places alone and die, etc.

 

The best horror film that I’ve seen so far is Grave Encounters. It’s a documentary fiction, like The Blair Witch Project (which I’m dying to see but I couldn’t find a high quality anywhere). The film was all about a crew of paranormal investigators who produce fake documentaries about ghost encounters, until they have experienced a real, crazy spirit encounters in a haunted asylum in Canada. I know it’s fiction but it seemed so real and terrifying. Because of its success, they made a sequel where in some stupid college students tried to enter the haunted asylum to prove if the Grave Encounters are real. It’s a No-No for me. I think it was very commercialized and they only did that for the sake of another success, which they failed, because it totally SUCKED.

 

Japanese and Thai are the masters of horror movies. Films like “The Grudge”, “Shutter”, “Coming Soon”, “One Missed Call”, are the ones that I’m going to recommend if you want to have nightmares for a week. I will not discuss the plots anymore, come see it for yourselves.

 

“What can you say about Filipino horror movies?” What? Shake Rattle and Roll? Feng Shui? No thanks. Since I’ve seen those movies I decided to give up on the Filipino horror film culture. But if you could recommend some independent pinoy horror movies, you can send me an email or comment down below.