Grave Encounters 2, 2012 - ★★½ (contains spoilers)

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This review reportedly contains spoilers.

I don't know how I feel about this movie.
It starts off with a number of youtube reviews of Grave Encounters. Then we start following film student Alex Wright (Richard Harmon) who is one of the reviewers. He gets messages by a youtube user called "Death Awaits" who shows him more about Grave Encounters, first a scene that wasn't in the movie, then more and more info.
Alex finds out that Grave Encounters really was real and not a fake.
So he get's the idea to make a documentary about what happened, and he decides to go into the asylum, with a group of friends, to see what really happens. Then, Grave Encounters happens.
Let me start by saying that I did not hate it.
Well, I hated the beginning. It was the typical "partying college students". Yay. Actually most of the beginning wasn't really that good, I started to like it when they set up the cameras and did the documentary. I really thought this was a good idea with just too much backstory. Before that happens we get lots of posting youtube videos, just being filmed because his friends are assholes and so on. We also have some scenes from the "movie" he is shooting, which are pretty funny, very bad dialogue, effects that you usually see in student films and so on. But we have steady shots, which is probably the main reason they made these scenes.
When they finally get into the hospital, we get pretty much the same scenes as in the first movie, trying to talk to the ghosts without success, setting up cameras and so on.
But while the first movie slowly build the tension by slowly increasing the stuff that happens, this movie has big jumps.
First nothing. Then, they use an ouija board and it works. Then the chinese guy gets thrown out the window. And then it's full on shocking.
They had some good ideas along the way though. For example when they leave the asylum in the middle of the movie. They drive back to the hotel, go to their room and then they get into the elevator which brings them back to the asylum. That was a neat idea.
The second good thing was when the ghosts start using the cameras. Sounds weird, and it is a little, but it makes for some cool shots. Because, as you know, ghosts work like camera cranes, they don't shake all the time. So towards the end of the film, we get cinematic shots, done with 3 floating cameras at the same time.
Also, when Seaon Rogerson (playing himself now after having played Lance Preston in the first one) comes back, the movie gets weird, but his acting is really good, I gotta hand that to him. He really feels crazy.
And I have to talk about the ending. At the end of the movie, the producer who was also in the first movie, Jerry Hartfield (Ben WIlkinson) talking to the camera about how this movie is not real at all, it is all just a movie.
So, in the first movie we have him telling us that everything is real.
In the second movie we have him telling us that everything is fake but with this face that makes you think it is real.
So I guess in the third movie we'll have him explain to us that it is fake but in reality, it really is real....
All in all, I didn't enjoy this movie all that much, it had some good ideas but was nowhere near the first movie. I rate it 2.5 out of 5 stars, it is watchable, but it's not a must see.