Just to prove that pretty much anything can spawn a sequel these days, Grave Encounters 2 pops up by unpopular demand, offering another take on the bafflingly extensive 'found footage ghost story set in a disused asylum' sub-genre.

Nothing if not self-aggrandising, the film takes place in a parallel universe where Grave Encounters was the talk of the internet, and opens up with assorted Youtube reviewers – authentically clueless and annoying – banging on about the film. One of these is Alex, a uniquely untalented wannabe filmmaker who becomes convinced that the film is not a work of badly made fiction, as most of us assumed, but actually portrays real events. Apparently, none of the actors in the film have worked since (understandable, anyone who has seen it might think) and so he persuades a bunch of his extraordinarily annoying friends to accompany him to the location of the film in search of the truth.

This is one of those films that takes forever to get to the meat of the action, bizarrely assuming that we will be interested in, and possibly even enamoured with the moronic characters that are at the heart of the story. Big mistake. We have to wade through what feels like hours of their idiotic partying and Alex's faux intensity before we finally get to the haunted house. Sitting through this is such an ordeal, I'm surprised the US military haven't started using it to torture information out of insurgents.

When we finally get into the house, the film admittedly picks up a gear, moving from painfully dismal to merely poor. The central theme of the original film – that this house is an inescapable maze – is once again brought into play, and a survivor from the original film, apparently trapped in the house for ten years and reduced to eating rats, turns up. In a way, this is where the film becomes even more frustrating. The first half is so without redeeming features that you simply don't care about it, but the final act actually has some potentially interesting ideas going on, and to see them so clumsily thrown away in a flurry of piss poor CGI, bad acting and inconsistency (the 'found footage' element doesn't stop convenient cuts to multiple angles, for instance) is rather annoying.

There is potentially a good, traditionally shot movie in the story behind the Grave Encounters films. Sadly, writers The Vicious Brothers (yeah...) and director Jon Poliquin are not up to the job. Encountering this DVD is a grave experience indeed, and one I suggest you try to avoid.

DAVID FLINT

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