History Film / GraveEncounters

* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:Lance ends up lobotomized, but it isn't made clear if he dies or not.]] [[GraveEncounters2 The Sequel covers what happened]]

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: As TheTagline states - "They were searching for proof... They found it."

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: Lance did want one hell of a ghost hunting show.

* ActionSurvivor: [[spoiler: Lance]] in the sequel. Surviving for nine years, [[spoiler: only nine years on the outside, with the weird time shenanigans inside the asylum he perceives 9 months having gone by]] in the hospital takes a toll on his sanity, but it's impressive nonetheless.

* ActionSurvivor: [[spoiler: Lance]] in the sequel. Surviving for nine years, [[spoiler: only nine months on the outside, with the weird time shenanigans inside the asylum he perceives 9 YEARS having gone by]] in the hospital takes a toll on his sanity, but it's impressive nonetheless.

* ActionSurvivor: [[spoiler: Lance]] in the sequel. Surviving for nine years, [[spoiler: only nine years on the outside, with the weird time shenanigans inside the asylum he only perceives 9 months having gone by]] in the hospital takes a toll on his sanity, but it's impressive nonetheless.

* ActionSurvivor: [[spoiler: Lance]] in the sequel. Surviving for nine years in the hospital takes a toll on his sanity, but it's impressive nonetheless.

** Played with repeatedly througout the movie. Regularly the crew tries to hole themselves up in a room to try and rest, and every time they're attacked or spooked in some fashion.

*** The window from the beginning of the movie that Kenny talked about did open with Mat in the room.
*** Dr. Friedkin is talked about for a good several minutes at the beginning of the movie, and Mat references that "he" can help them get better and leave the hospital. [[spoiler: His ghost shows up later in the fabled operating room]].

** The Tall Man, a twisted, gangly, demonic thing that pops up through a window.

* VolumetricMouth: The woman in the corner reveals herself to be a ghost when she shows she's got a Volumetric Mouth ''and Eyes''.

%%* RoomFullOfCrazy

*** One of the gimmicks the crew uses at the beginning is using a flash-camera to take pictures, supposedly having whatever ghosts are around showing up more clearly in them. While when they first attempt this, there is nothing more than the photographed walls, when Lance later hastily does this while angrily wondering what's causing the disturbances, the film shows that the pictures now depict demonic ghostly entities floating nearby all the characters.
*** Lance explains that "intelligent hauntings", while rare, involve spirits interacting, and that people have been pushed, scratched and even thrown. [[spoiler: TC gets pushed down the stairs, Sasha wakes up with a message scratched on her back, and Houston is thrown across a hallway via an explosion.]]

* FoundFootageFilms

* GhostlyGoals: Type B, the ghosts in the hospital don't seem to have any purpose beyond running around scaring everybody, causing extreme harm, and killing.

* LetsSplitUpGang: Lampshaded by Sasha when Lance suggests doing this while looking for Matt - [[TooDumbToLive they wind up doing it anyway]].

* MeaningfulBackgroundEvent: Early on, T.C. gets a phone call from his partner and child, so puts the camera down to answer it. As he talks, [[spoiler: the wheelchair behind him moves by itself ever so slightly just as he says "Don't worry, monsters aren't real."]]

* MeaningfulEcho: In the [[RoomFullOfCrazy room with writing all over the walls]], the patient inside had written, amongst other things: "DEMONS IN THE WALLS / DEMONS IN THE HALLS / DEMONS IN MY MIND / DEMONS YOU WILL FIND". [[spoiler:Lance later starts screaming this mantra as he completely loses it.]]

* NeverSleepAgain: The crew tries to stay awake in shifts, because whenever they all fall asleep, something bad happens to remind the cast they're being toyed with. [[spoiler: Sasha is effectively "killed" in the end when a fog envelopes her and Lance while they sleep, only to have Lance awaken unharmed but with no clue as to where Sasha remotely is: taken by the fog while they slept]].

* NothingIsScarier: Somewhat averted, unlike most of the [[FoundFootageFilms movies in its genre]], the ghosts in this film get bored of being subtle after 15 minutes. There are still some nice tense moments where the viewer is waiting to see what's around the corner.

* RoomFullOfCrazy

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: The team actually wants to call it quits when things just became mildly creepy, but Lance wants to film everything. [[spoiler: Turns out, even if they decided to leave right then and there, its not like the hospital will let them.]]

* ShadowDiscretionShot: [[spoiler: Lance's lobotomy is not shown, you hear him plead sanity, then scream in pain before seeing the after effects.]]

* TalkativeLoon: [[spoiler: Lance]] in the sequel.

* WasOnceAMan: Heavily implied. In one point in time they were normal human beings, skip to the present and now they're ghostly {{Humanoid Abomination}}s stalking the hallways of the [[EldritchLocation hospital]] for victims.

*** When the search begins, they run into a room with a bunch of rats in it and are grossed out. [[spoiler: Lance winds up having to eat the rats for sustenance, and the same door leads to Dr. Friedkins operating room later.]]

** Later, [[spoiler:Matt, having been driven insane, throws himself down an elevator shaft.]] although this one may have been an accident

* DeathByFallingOver: [[spoiler: Matt, in his insane state, looks down the elevator shaft with the camera. The camera shows him falling to his doom, and the two remaining members both rush over to find him dead having fallen over four floors to the ground and hitting solid concrete.]]

* CreepyChild: The little girl ghost in the sequel.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Almost every death in either movie.

** The group decides to house up in a defunct mental hospital overnight where ghostly apparitions exist, believing that it is safe and nothing but folklore, boy does that turn out wrong.

* HorrorStruck: Members of the cast and crew at first dismiss the stories of the hospital as garbage, and even bribe a man to make stuff up because they don't believe they'll find anything. Then, when every story they heard comes true, suddenly they're all believers.

''Grave Encounters'' is a 2011 indie [[FoundFootageFilms found footage]] horror film directed by the Vicious Brothers. It documents the fate of the crew of a ''Series/GhostHunters''-esque (or more specifically, Series/GhostAdventures) reality show which surveys haunted locations in the hopes of capturing ghostly activity on film. A prologue mentions that this particular episode, centering around an abandoned mental hospital in the Danvers County area, was to be the sixth, and the raw footage shows how the crew initially play up the spooky factor to increase the atmosphere. [[FromBadToWorse However, they soon find themselves in the middle of a nightmare as the sun goes down...]]

It has a sequel, ''Film/GraveEncounters2''

* StylisticSuck: Houston is only pretending to be a psychic for the purpose of the show... and it shows in his blatantly [[LargeHam hammy]] and cheesy performance. WordOfGod states that Houston was based on a real-life "psychic" employed for a ''GhostHunters''-style show.

* TakeThat: To ''GhostHunters'' and similar shows, and reality shows in general.

* VeryLooselyBasedOnATrueStory: Some of the earlier antics are partially reminiscent of how real ghost hunting teams such as GhostHunters do things, but when they actually start seeing ghosts it blows into its own story.
* WasOnceAMan: Heavily implied. In one point in time they were normal human beings, skip to the present and now they're ghostly [[HumanoidAbomination humanoid abominations]] stalking the hallways of the [[EldritchLocation hospital]] for victims.

* BolivianArmyEnding: [[spoiler:Lance ends up lobotomised, but it isn't made clear if he dies or not.]] [[GraveEncounters2 The Sequel covers what happened]]

* MedicalHorror: Dr. Friedkin, the famous surgeon who did tons of unethical experiments, including lobotomies mentioned at the beginning of the film [[spoiler: is in the hospital with the ghosts still doing lobotomies with his nurses and tools.]] This is especially true since the ending strongly implies that the reason for all this ghost business is that [[spoiler: he was taking part in somekind of BlackMagic.]]

* PsychologicalHorror: They do have a lot of physical threats, but there are several indirect threats as well from sickness, lack of food, never ending corridors and no exits, culminating with the fact that time is passing very quickly and they have no light.

* {{Room101}}: The hosptial in a general sense, and the operation chamber in a literal example.

''Grave Encounters'' is a 2011 indie [[FoundFootageFilms found footage]] horror film directed by the Vicious Brothers. It documents the fate of the crew of a ''Series/GhostHunters''-esque (or more specifically, "Series/Ghost Adventures") reality show which surveys haunted locations in the hopes of capturing ghostly activity on film. A prologue mentions that this particular episode, centering around an abandoned mental hospital in the Danvers County area, was to be the sixth, and the raw footage shows how the crew initially play up the spooky factor to increase the atmosphere. [[FromBadToWorse However, they soon find themselves in the middle of a nightmare as the sun goes down...]]

''Grave Encounters'' is a 2011 indie [[FoundFootageFilms found footage]] horror film directed by the Vicious Brothers. It documents the fate of the crew of a ''Series/GhostHunters''-esque reality show which surveys haunted locations in the hopes of capturing ghostly activity on film. A prologue mentions that this particular episode, centering around an abandoned mental hospital in the Danvers County area, was to be the sixth, and the raw footage shows how the crew initially play up the spooky factor to increase the atmosphere. [[FromBadToWorse However, they soon find themselves in the middle of a nightmare as the sun goes down...]]

* DevelopingDoomedCharacters
** It works better than other movies, though, as the characters all behave realistically, and it helps the audience empathize more strongly with their situation - a key element in a movie built on NothingIsScarier.

** [[spoiler: T.C's death]] seems to be a ShoutOut to a similar scene near the end of ''{{REC}} 2'' and the end is similar to the one in ''Film/{{REC}}''.