The Found Footage Movie That Skewered Ghost Hunting Reality TV
I have a confession: I love ghost-hunting reality television, especially Ghost Adventures. I know what you’re thinking: “That show sucks!” or “She probably thinks Zak Bagans is hot!” To this I say, yes, I know, and I plead the fifth. But this isn’t about my love for the Travel Channel. This is about Grave Encounters, the underrated found footage movie that made every aspiring ghost hunter rethink their career. Sure, these shows are guaranteed hits (the Discovery Channel’s ratings went up 15% after prioritizing paranormal programming), turning regular people into household names. But what if a bogus crew of ghost hunters actually came face-to-face with the paranormal? Would they know what to do?
According to Grave Encounters, the answer is no. But why would they? Their trip to a haunted psychiatric hospital is just another day on the job: getting the right shots, hamming it up to the camera, interviewing town historians, you know, the usual. Lance (Sean Rogerson), the show’s cynical, spiky-haired host, is confident they’ll get everything they need for yet another thrilling episode.
And in a way, he’s right.
We love Grave Encounters here at Dread Central. Our own Editor-In-Chief Mary Beth McAndrews thinks it’s “a perfect skewering of paranormal ghost hunting shows while also innovating in the found footage space.” We also love how it “prey[s] on [the] morbid curiosity” that makes us watch something like this in the first place. Do you really want to see the final episode of a ghost-hunting show gone terribly wrong? Sure! Press play!
Grave Encounters exposes the hollow mechanics of ghost-hunting shows, and by extension, reality television as a whole. The crew is made up of hucksters in the oldest sense of the word, relying on cheap tricks and fake mediums to make an empty building feel haunted. So when the real scares start, we’re almost delighted to see them suffer, especially Lance, who is lobotomized at the end.
It’s actually funny to me that it’s Lance who gets the lobotomy. In order to consume or produce this content, you have to shut down critical thinking and give yourself over to the spectacle. The film punishes both the team that exploits real pain and history for views, and the audience who willingly checks their skepticism at the door in order to be entertained.
This, of course, includes me. As I said earlier, I’m guilty of being a reality television junkie, watching episode after episode of everything from dating shows to Ghost Adventures with the excuse that I’m doing it in a “sociological way.” And I’m guilty of thinking that I could easily be on one of these shows myself. I think I could handle a ghost, but I draw the line at eating a rat.
If you love Grave Encounters or want to talk about Zak Bagans with me, let me know: @ashjenexi on Instagram and X.
Categorized: News
