Greetings, all. Ambush Bug here with a special AICN HORROR: ZOMBIES & SHARKS column. This time around, I had a chance to talk to the masterminds behind the new film GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2. If you recall, GRAVE ENCOUNTERS was a decent hit last year, first seeing the light of day around San Diego Comic Con and then tearing it up in your face on DVD & VOD. The film’s follow up, I think, is a much superior movie in both directing and storytelling. I’ll be reviewing the film in depth later on down the page, but first, here’s an interview with Stuart Ortiz & Stuart Minihan, collectively known as The Vicious Brothers…

COLIN MINIHAN: Stu, do you want to take that one?
STUART ORTIZ: No. (laughs)
CM: You know, Stu an I both just always liked darker horror movies and we are obviously big fans of the genre and when we were making our first movie we weren’t wanting to use our names, because it’s just so much to look at when you’ve got two directors on the screen basically in the credits, so we created a name that we thought suited our brand of horror I suppose.
BUG: Very cool. Well I did get a chance to see GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2 and I saw the first one a while back, last year, and this is a really… I thought it was a leap ahead for you guys. You guys produced this film, correct?
SO: Yeah, we wrote, produced, and co-edited the film.
BUG: Okay. For people who haven’t maybe seen GRAVE ENCOUNTERS or the sequel, what should they expect going into this film?
SO: I don’t know. I’d say to go in with an open mind, because it’s a lot different than the first movie. We were conscious to the fact of when we were going to do a sequel that if we were going to do a sequel, we really didn’t want to just retrace our footsteps and rehash the first movie. Sequels are pretty notorious for doing that a lot of the time with a pretty derivative follow up and we were like “Well, if we are going to do something, let’s really try to do something that’s different and something that’s just out of the box,” so I would say…

SO: Yeah, it’s a bigger badder horror film, I think. Yeah, we had greater resources with this movie, so we were able to do a lot more creative stuff with it.
BUG: Well I really thought the lead performance by the main character was great. What was his name?
SO: Richard Harmon, who plays “Alex Wright.”
BUG: Yeah. He really did a fantastic job and also he was pretty harsh on the first film. He plays a film student and he does an online critics blog and he was pretty harsh on that. Did you guys write that in the script as just a little bit of self criticism or how did that come about?
CM: The movie is so meta and it has these film guys reviewing it and blogs and stuff, so you know it just didn’t seem right to have everyone be like praising the movie or whatever, so we figured “Fuck it, let’s just make these film school kids more cynical and not even like the movie. It will be more funny if they’re just dissing it, essentially.”
SO: We figured that we might as well put it out there, you know what I mean? Just kind of embrace the criticism of the first movie and be like “Yep, not everybody loves it and that’s just how it is.”
BUG: Yeah, and there is a huge leap in production and the effects and everything. Did you guys bring in someone new for effects for this film?

BUG: I don’t want to give too many of the twists and everything away about the story, but is it okay to say that the host from the last film makes an appearance in this film?
CM: Yeah, for sure. You can definitely say that.
BUG: Was it difficult to bring the cast members back for this second one? Were you guys still tight over the last year?
CM: Yeah, we knew initially when we started discussing writing the sequel that we wanted to bring Sean Rogerson, who plays Lance Preston in the first film, back. One, just because it worked and two, because he was just a pleasure to work with and he’s got a fantastic vibe on set and an energy that carries the production to a certain point. So really there’s two main characters to the franchise for us, one is Billy, two is Sean Rogerson. So we knew right away that we wanted to bring him back and we actually approached him about it before we even knew that we had the financing and distribution in place. It looked like it was going to happen and we knew the direction that we wanted to take the script and it was kind of like Stu and I were like “You should probably start losing some weight…” “You ought to stop eating now.” “You have been in there for a while…”

SO: Yeah, I definitely think there’s room. We’re just going to wait and see if the movie does well and if people like it and if the people want one and if they do, we definitely got an idea and again it’s not just sort of a rehash of the second one. We have an idea for the third one that’s even more out there, so we are excited about it.
BUG: There were a couple of things that stood out that I really liked about the film. I liked with the first one and the second one how it was very much like a funhouse ride where the creatures are in your face, they come running towards you or they come right out of the blue and they are coming after you down the hallway. Usually in ghost films it’s kind of just subtle things happening in the background and this is a much more in your face, aggressive sort of scare.
CM: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s disappointing that most mainstream horror movies that are ghosts films are scared to show anything. You’re seeing more of a progression I guess of seeing more and more of the PARANORMAL ACTIVITIES, but I think the audience ultimately wants to see something in a film like this. It’d just be boring if we were rehashing the old door slamming move and the blankets coming off of the bed and these things that audiences have seen a million times and obviously they are effective and less is more in most cases, but with this franchise we really wanted to be the found footage film that actually showed the fucking ghosts.

SO: I think it gets difficult, especially when with a found footage film everything is from the character’s perspective, you kind of get backed into a corner, because… It just seemed like a natural progression that we could make the ghosts use the camera and open up the ability to…. For example there’s a great tracking shot in the movie of Sean Rogerson walking down a hallway and it’s really beautiful and really cinematic and you could never do that otherwise. But I think it just opens the film up.
BUG: Definitely. So what’s next for you guys?
CM: We actually aren’t directing anything other than hiring a director who we thought was awesome, but the dude who directed this movie is fantastic talent, John Poliquin who is in commercials and the music video world. But Stu and myself are actually finishing the tweaks on a script right now for a sci-fi horror film that we hope to go in to production on in the next few months here. The financing is just coming to a close on it and we are very excited, because it’s going to be a much bigger film than either these two GRAVE ENCOUNTERS.

CM: Yeah. (Laughs) Yeah, that’s us.
BUG: I really liked that. And the producer, was that an actual producer or was that an actor?
SO: That’s an actor. That’s a great actor actually, a guy named Ben Wilkinson who we used just a little bit like in the first movie, who opens the first GRAVE ENCOUNTERS and he also was just a pleasure to work with an awesome actor. We were like “We’ve got to bring this guy back in.” The GRAVE ENCOUNTERS franchise I think is interesting in that we’ve gotten a lot of people who say the first movie is pretty well acted and I think the second movie is even better acted. We actually care about good acting and good performances. Me and Colin enjoy writing dialog and enjoy scenes that aren’t just necessarily gags and horror stuff. We love working with actors and we like to get good performances. There’s a long stretch in GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2 where it’s just literally the character of Alex and then the character of the producer and they are just having a conversation back and forth. That’s actually one of my favorite scenes in the movie, I think, and it has nothing to do with horror, it’s just purely the performances of the actors which carries it.
BUG: How do you get that natural feel to it where it doesn’t feel like they are saying lines, it feels like you’re just talking when you’re in the script writing process?

BUG: Very cool. So is the film going to be getting a theatrical run?
CM: Yeah, the film is doing a… Tribeca is doing midnight screenings in a bunch of cities in the US. You can go to graveencounters2.com and there’s a list of the cities. I think they start on October 12th and the Video On Demand release is October 2nd in the US as well.
BUG: Fantastic. One more thing just about found footage films in general, I know that there and the theory is just because it’s very cheap to film that basically a lot of people can do it. I've said I’m not really sick of found footage films, I’m sick of the bad ones. As far as found footage films go, what’s your theory about why they are so popular right now?

CM: I think the oversaturation of it, you’re right. That has to do with the indie guys that’s trying to make a movie or the dad who always dreamed of making movies, but never did getting together with his friends and going and shooting a shitty found footage movie. I think if you go on NetFlix, you’ll probably find a hundred of them and it’s a shame that it oversaturates the market with garbage, but hopefully those movies don’t come out until…
BUG: Well you guys have made two of the better ones, so congratulations on that and I wish you guys all the success with this new film, it’s a great film. Thank you very much for talking with me today.
SO: All right, thanks a lot man.
CM: Yeah, thanks.
BUG: Have a good day. Look for GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2 in limited release October 12 (find out where here at graveencounters2.com) and is available now on Video On Demand! Below is my review of the film!

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2 (2012)
Directed by John PoliquinWritten by The Vicious Brothers
Starring Richard Harmon, Stephanie Bennett, Leanne Lapp, Howie Lai, Dylan Playfair, Sean Rogerson
Find out more about this film here!
Reviewed by Ambush Bug
The first GRAVE ENCOUNTERS was a decent little film which took some familiar imagery and story concepts such as the hand held ghosthunting motif, the scary person in the corner scene, and basically the Blair With approach that all of this is actually real and added a few very fun elements such as making the abandoned hospital the investigating team is going through be more of a funhouse with ghosts actively chasing the cast and being much more aggressive and in your face than most films of this type. Though some of the effects were a bit lackluster and not all of the acting was top notch, I thought it was a decent little effort. That said, I wasn’t sure a sequel to the film was necessary when I heard that it was going to be released a year later. With what seemed to be a rush to get it made in the span on about a year and clips showing much more of the same, I thought GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2 was going to be the same old, same old and to be honest, I wasn’t really looking forward to watching it.

Sure, this seems pretty stupid to you and I, but it’s this point in the film where that leap in logic is necessary for the rest of the film to work. Basically it is all set up to get a new batch of people into the hospital to get the shit scared and ripped out of them by hideous giant mouthed monster-ghosts.
A few things though, keep this film from being just more of the same. In many ways, this feels more like a continuation from the first film rather than a rehash. Yes, it is a bunch of kids stumbling around in the dark and screaming and running from ghosts, but as it was established in the interview above, the reintroduction of Sean Rogerson’s Lance Preston in the second act, having been lost and roaming the halls of the hospital since the tape ran out in the last film, makes it feel much more sequential and like a second chapter of a bigger story. While Rogerson does his best Golem impression, he does show a lot of range in the role, switching to talk show host mode as soon as the camera is on his again.

The film has a few more twists and turns I won’t go into, but GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2 does break new ground by having the ghosts pick up the camera and film the scared kids when they are too scared to hold onto the cameras themselves. I loved this little expansion of the found footage genre as the monster itself has a camera now, filming the screaming kids and not vice versa.
There are still a lot of in yo’ face ghosts and creepy largemouth bass-like ghosts screaming and running at the camera to be enjoyed reigniting the funhouse feel that was so prevalent in the first film. GRAVE ENCOUNTERS 2 may be PARANORMAL ACTIVITY’s inbred cousin, but this sequel shows that the people behind this franchise at least are thinking, keeping what works, and adding interesting new twists, which is something I can’t say for 90% of the sequels and remakes out there today.




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