Greetings, all. Ambush Bug here with a special edition of AICN HORROR: ZOMBIES & SHARKS. Today, we’ve got another interview with the directors of GRAVE ENCOUNTERS. But before we dive into the interview, here’s my review of the film. Enjoy!

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS (2011)
Directed by The Vicious BrothersWritten by The Vicious Brothers
Starring Sean Rogerson, Juan Riedinger, Ashleigh Gryzko, Mackenzie Gray, & Merwin Mondesir
For more info check out the film’s website here.
Reviewed by Ambush Bug
My guilty pleasure is GHOST HUNTERS and all reality TV like it. Give me a night vision cam wandering a dark hallway and my ass is glued to the couch and my eyes to the TV. So I’m the right audience for GRAVE ENCOUNTERS, a “found footage” film about a paranormal investigation team; one of the first, according to the producer’s intro, and the tapes found inside of a haunted sanitarium which were never released. The producer at the beginning assures the viewer that nothing has been altered in these tapes and that the only edits were for time constraints. With that set up, the film ominously starts and we are introduced to our host (Sean Rogerson), the occult specialist (Ashleigh Gryzko), the sound guy (Juan Riedinger), the cameraman (Merwin Mondesir) and the medium (Mackenzie Gray). What stars out as a routine investigation by a bunch of jaded “investigators” gets real really quick and soon this team who don’t really believe in ghosts encounter something real and scary.


The other challenging aspect of all found footage films is finding a reason to continue filming when the shit goes down. Here, that moment is sold with Rogerson’s orders to keep rolling despite his crew rebelling against him. But when stuff starts going completely off the reservation, you soon stop questioning why the camera is rolling and just roll with it because the locale and the situations are too creepy to care.

Find out when and where you can check out GRAVE ENCOUNTERS here.

COLIN MINIHAN (CM): Hey, what’s up Mark?
AMBUSH BUG (BUG): Hey, how are you doing? I’ll make this quick, because I know we only have a couple of minutes here. So how are you doing today?
CM: Good.
STUART ORTIZ (SO): Great.
BUG: So I just wanted to talk a little bit about GRAVE ENCOUNTERS. I saw the film a little while ago; it was a really cool movie. Can you tell people who the basic premise of the film?
CM: Sure. It’s about the crew of a ghost hunting reality television show along the lines of GHOST ADVENTURES or PARANORMAL STATE or GHOST HUNTERS that have a show that have a show that’s called “GRAVE ENCOUNTERS” and they are shooting their sixth episode at an abandoned mental institution and everything goes horribly wrong.

SO: I think we were just very conscious, Mark, of the different approaches to these kinds of shows and inherently in these shows…we wanted the audience to be familiar and recognize it and think that it might be a reality television program instead of a movie, so when we decided the format to shoot the film on first I guess, we figured that it would be best to shoot on HD cameras using video lenses that give a very reality TV aesthetic, versus a more cinematic feel to it, and you know you are talking about doing interviews and all of these kinds of things and you know it’s just a matter of having the right skill set to kind of put aside your regular thoughts as far as narrative filmmaking that you are basically going out and making a fake documentary.
BUG: Yeah, the actors seem to be really authentic in this film. What went into you choosing…what was the process of picking people who are really good at acting like they are not acting?

BUG: Yeah, well some of the films that I have seen done in this sort of found footage format, they actually use their own cameraman and they cast their cameraman in the story, is that what you did here? Is the cameraman in the story, is he an actor or was it not him holding the camera the whole time?

BUG: Yeah, so have you had any reaction from actual people like the GHOST HUNTERS or the GHOST ADVENTURES people or any of those other reality shows that may have seen this film yet?
CM: (laughs) So far, no. I mean, it’s funny, the host of GHOST ADVENTURES I think we followed his Twitter feed and every so often we will just see a random Tweet to him that’s like “Have you heard of GRAVE ENCOUNTERS? These guys like totally ripped off your…” But then we were at Comic Con and someone interviewed us and they said that they had just talked to, I think it’s either Zak [Bagans] or Aaron [Goodwin] I think, one of the other guys from GHOST ADVENTURES, and were telling him that they were going to interview us next or whatever and they had never heard of the movie and he kind of explained to them what it was and initially I guess the guy was concerned that we were just doing another GHOST ADVENTURES show, but then when he realized it was a movie he was like “Oh, that sounds kind of cool.” So I don’t know.

BUG: Are you a fan of those TV shows?
CM: Yeah, I think definitely we are. I mean, when we were writing the script we were actually working on a different project and basically we would get burnt writing and we would always just keep finding ourselves watching these shows and kind of laughing at some of the stuff and also realizing that, you know, there’s definitely an element of horror in here and we just kind of looked at one another one day and basically realized that it would a great vehicle for a found footage film and that’s kind of where the idea to make GRAVE ENCOUNTERS came from, you know? It’s just taking what all of the shows were already doing, but making the ultimate version out of all of them, essentially, and you know when people watch those shows, they are kind of disappointed, because it’s just year after year of calling out ghosts’ names and never seeing anything, but with our film we wanted to definitely see stuff.
BUG: That’s what I wrote in my review that this is what you want to see in those Ghost Hunter shows that you rarely do see.
CM: Definitely.

SO: Well, I wouldn’t say that we only want to do horror films, although of course we are huge horror fans and the first film that we ever wanted to make would be a horror film, but I think our directing name is appropriate. We pretty much want to be doing genre films--horror, thriller, sci-fi horror, sci-fi--all of these things would be appropriate, but always we want to do them with a “vicious” slant to them that has a lot of darkness to it.
CM: Maybe at some point we will do a romantic comedy with Kate Hudson or something like that, but somewhere down the line we could tackle that as well.
BUG: (laughs) A “vicious” romantic comedy. So are you guys going on the circuit on hosting this film? Are you going to be playing any of the festivals?
CM: Yeah, we’ll be doing the international stuff still. I mean, the North American release is coming up real quick, but we are actually going to be screening at Sitges in Spain in October as well as Busan in South Korea and then Fantasy in Germany as well, so I’m not sure which ones we are going to make it out to, but hopefully Sitges and a few of the rest.

CM: Just to check out the film, because this film is pretty much like PARANORMAL ACTIVITY on steroids.
BUG: Alright, well thanks a lot guys. I appreciate you taking the time to talk with me today. I’ll try to get this interview up as soon as possible and yeah, good luck with the film. Thanks a lot everybody.
SO: Thanks man.
BUG: GRAVE ENCOUNTERS is in select theaters throughout August and also available On Demand. Be sure to seek it out. It’s a funhouse ride of a flick!
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