I love horror films, especially the paranormal sub-genre, and Grave Encounters is the newest on the list of impressive low budget indie films. The premise is very similar to something like House On Haunted Hill, people go into a house, or in this case a mental asylum to investigate paranormal happenings and things get nasty.
Grave Encounters isn't original in any way, while watching it I was thinking "oh I've seen that happen in this movie or that movie" , it seems to have taken a lot of factors from a lot of other paranormal horror movies and rolled them all into one which I thought was excellent, the fact that it's not overly original isn't a bad thing at all, Hollywood isn't well known for it's originality, it uses formulas that have worked well before in a non direct wAy. The pacing of the scares is great, it's slowly built up so that its more intense when there finally is a genuine scare, I hate when horror movies just have cheap scares just to try and keep people interested, this movie builds tension so well, I was in the edge of my seat most of the time. The asylum where the film is set is terrifying, the whole place just has an overwhelming sense of dread, it's the last place I would ever want to spend the night.
The acting is rather decent, except for a few times when the lead male had me cringing, the dude who plays the "psychic" is awesome, he brought a little bit of a comic edge which was nice.
So yeah, not the most original horror film but it still delivers genuine thrills, if you're a horror fan I doubt you'll see a better paranormal horror this year. To me it was like Blair Witch with a dab of Yellow Brick Road and a sprinkle of House On Haunted Hill.
Highly recommended, just don't expect lots of originality.