“Welcome Back to Collingwood—Now With 40% More Screaming and 100% Less Sense”
If Grave Encounters was a surprisingly effective little ghost ride through the found footage funhouse, then Grave Encounters 2 is the cinematic equivalent of sticking your tongue in a live socket just to see if you’ll get famous. It’s a sequel so bad it makes you nostalgic for shaky cameras and fake night vision.
Directed by John Poliquin and written by the Vicious Brothers (who must’ve been feeling unusually merciful toward humanity when they chose “Vicious” instead of “Utterly Sadistic”), the film attempts to get meta—like Scream for people who can’t spell “narrative coherence.” It’s about a group of film students investigating the first Grave Encounters movie as if it were real, only to end up in the same haunted asylum, screaming into the same fisheye lens, and dying in equally dumb ways.
Think The Blair Witch Project meets YouTube comments section, but everyone’s drunk on Monster energy drinks and plot holes.
The Premise: What If The First Movie Happened Again, But Worse?
Our hero—if one can use that word without legal consequences—is Alex Wright (Richard Harmon), a film student and self-proclaimed horror aficionado who has watched Grave Encounters roughly 47 times, which is 46 more than anyone should.
Alex believes the first movie wasn’t fiction but real found footage (because apparently nobody in this universe has ever heard of actors). He’s obsessed with proving it, like Mulder from The X-Files but with less charm and worse hair.
After receiving cryptic messages from an online user named “DeathAwaits6” (which is how you know a movie is about to go downhill), Alex convinces his film-school buddies to break into the same haunted asylum. Because nothing says “brilliant career move” like trespassing into a condemned building where people were last seen being eviscerated on night vision.
From there, it’s déjà boo: flickering lights, creaky hallways, and ghosts who apparently took acting lessons between films.
The Cast: Millennials Meet the Macabre
Alex drags along his crew of walking horror clichés:
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Trevor, the frat bro with all the depth of a wet pizza box.
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Jennifer, the sensible girlfriend whose only crime is having better survival instincts than the script allows.
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Tessa, the token friend doomed by her haircut.
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Jared, who exists mostly to die spectacularly and remind us the camera has a zoom feature.
Every conversation sounds like it was written by an AI that only learned English by binge-watching Ghost Adventures. They film everything because “it’s for the documentary,” even while running from demonic nurses and invisible chiropractors. Found footage logic: why scream when you can monologue into a camera about how scared you are?
The Ghosts: Still Here, Still Bored
Remember the creepy atmosphere of Grave Encounters—the claustrophobic hallways, the tension of not knowing what’s real? Yeah, forget that. The sequel trades all that for CGI that looks like it was rendered on a microwave.
The ghosts now pop out of walls like malfunctioning carnival animatronics. One spirit literally flings a guy out of a window like it’s competing in Olympic ghost shot put. Another crushes a girl’s head with invisible hands, which would’ve been scary if it didn’t look like she was just really frustrated with the script.
The asylum itself—Collingwood—still bends time and space, but this time it just feels like the editor lost the reel and decided to improvise geography. One moment they’re in a hallway, the next in a basement, then back in the hallway again, as if the ghosts are playing musical chairs with continuity.
The Meta-Twist: “It’s a Movie About the Movie About the Movie!”
This is where the film decides to get deep. Alex learns that Grave Encounters wasn’t fake—it was real found footage turned into a movie by evil Hollywood producers. In other words, the first film’s cast didn’t die in vain—they died for box office returns.
This revelation is supposed to be chilling, but it mostly feels like a therapy session for the filmmakers who regret making the first movie. It’s cinematic cannibalism: a sequel eating its own predecessor while the audience starves for originality.
Even worse, they bring back Sean Rogerson as Lance Preston—the hero from the first film—who’s been trapped in the asylum for nine years, surviving on rats, toilet water, and apparently sheer willpower to collect a paycheck. His reappearance should’ve been triumphant, but it’s like watching your favorite band reunite for one last concert and realize they forgot how to play instruments.
The Logic (or Lack Thereof): Booze Before Brains
Every decision in this movie feels like it was made during a blackout. The group escapes the asylum… only to get back into an elevator that teleports them back inside. That’s not supernatural horror—that’s bad navigation.
They find a red door that’s supposedly the way out, but of course it’s locked by ghost chains (patent pending). When they finally open it, it leads to—surprise—nowhere! The door literally opens into the void, which is also where the plot resides.
At some point, Alex kills his girlfriend with a camera to “finish the film,” because apparently the ghosts only let you leave if you submit a final cut. It’s like Final Draft meets Final Destination.
And when he finally escapes, he walks out of the asylum straight into Los Angeles traffic like a hungover extra from The Matrix Reloaded.
The Tone: Found Footage, Lost Patience
The biggest horror in Grave Encounters 2 isn’t the ghosts—it’s the editing. Scenes drag on forever, dialogue loops like a broken record, and every scare is telegraphed by the subtle audio cue of “LOUD NOISES!”
There’s even a subplot about a satanic doctor who merged dimensions through lobotomy rituals, which sounds intriguing until you realize it’s just an excuse to throw more CGI blood at the camera. The film tries to be profound about reality, perception, and the power of cinema, but it mostly just looks like a student film that escaped from YouTube.
If The Blair Witch Project made you afraid of the woods, Grave Encounters 2 will make you afraid of film school.
The Ending: The Ultimate Jump Scare—Another Sequel Tease
After surviving the asylum, Alex becomes a famous director, his footage edited into Grave Encounters 2—the very movie we’re watching. Meta, right? Except instead of feeling clever, it feels like the cinematic version of being Rickrolled.
The last frame flashes GPS coordinates to the real filming location, because apparently the best way to end your horror movie is with an ad for Google Maps. “Want to experience terror firsthand? Just search these coordinates!” Yeah, sure, let me pack a GoPro and zero self-preservation.
Performances: Everyone Deserves a Participation Trophy
Richard Harmon tries his best to give Alex some depth, but there’s only so much you can do when your character’s main motivation is “make movie, don’t die.” Leanne Lapp, as Jennifer, shows real emotion—mostly the emotion of regret for signing the contract.
Sean Rogerson, returning as Lance, looks like he’s been living in a deleted scene from Cast Away. He has all the haunted intensity of a man who realized mid-shoot this script wasn’t going to resurrect his career.
The rest of the cast dies faster than your Wi-Fi during a storm, but to their credit, they at least commit to the screaming.
Final Thoughts: Grave Mistakes
Grave Encounters 2 isn’t just a bad sequel—it’s a horror film about what happens when ambition grabs the camera and common sense runs for the hills. It wants to comment on found footage, fame, and the blurred line between reality and fiction, but ends up blurring only the line between horror and headache.
It’s self-aware in the same way a drunk man is self-aware when he insists, “I’m fine,” while falling down a staircase.
By the time the credits roll, you’ll be grateful for one thing: that you didn’t have to survive nine years in an asylum to escape this movie.
Final Rating
1.5 lobotomized film students out of 5.
A sequel so confused, it makes ghosts look well-adjusted. Grave Encounters 2 proves some footage should stay buried—preferably under several tons of concrete and regret.
