The refusal to mind our business is, according to the cinema, one of humanity’s greatest weaknesses. It’s what got an entire posse annihilated in Hang Em’ High, and what got Jake Gittes a slit nose in Chinatown. On the sci-fi side of things, the refusal takes the form of hubris, re-interpreting the tale of Icarus for contemporary tastes. Every character sprung from the creative loins of Dr. Frankenstein has sparked mayhem in their quest to fly ever closer to the sun. Re-orienting that same audacity within horror is easy; characters often investigate noises, stay in clearly haunted homes, pick up cursed artifacts, and make generally awful choices. Within the found footage subgenre, the majority of stories chronicle the fallout of an invasion of some kind. It can be bodily invasion, your possession/infection joints (Apartment 143, REC) or a deadly outbreak (The Bay). On the macro level, creatures like the beasts of Cloverfield and Trollhunter destroy civilization onscreen while their respective countries’ governments do their best to contain the threat. The most fascinating form the invasion conceit takes within found footage is that of the vulture tourist. Casually entering spaces of tragedy or death, the vulture tourist seeks personal or professional gain from solemn places – and receives punishment in kind for the trespass. The overarching lesson of these stories is simple: stay in your lane.
The first example of vulture tourism that comes to mind is the simplest; The Blair Witch Project’s central premise is of a trio of film students who trek into the tree line of Maryland’s Black Woods to shoot a documentary on a local legend. Those with more iron stomachs might cite Cannibal Holocaust, which sends an American filmmaking team into the Amazon rainforest for a documentary that ends up a festival of pain for all involved. In both cases, folks try to make a film surrounding things they don’t fully understand and thus, underestimate.
In Danse Macabre, Stephen King distilled the average horror tale down to a single metaphor, “the outbreak of some Dionysian madness in an Apollonian existence.” Many found footage joints relegate the Apollonian existence to the first fifteen minutes or so: 2011 hit Grave Encounters begins in its producer’s office as he explains the paranormal show of the same title, and its crew’s subsequent disappearance. Their destination is no stranger to trauma; Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital was, according to experts, an inhumane dumping ground for the mentally ill. Its most notorious figure is Arthur Friedkin (Arthur Corber), Collingwood’s head physician during the 1940s, where he routinely tapped holes into the skulls of his patients (under the guise of experimental brain surgery) until they killed him in a 1948 uprising. It’s a soiled place, one where the specter of violent death lingers like that of burnt toast. This doesn’t faze the five-person crew of Grave Encounters who, according to series host Lance Preston (Sean Rogerson), are in search of, “the Ghost of Collingwood Psychiatric Hospital.” Why would anyone in their right mind spend the night in such a place? In the 2012 sequel, Preston (who had been missing for nine years by this point in the film’s timeline) would explain, “Because we needed to find the truth, okay?” But the presence of faux medium Houston Grey (Mackenzie Gray) and a manufactured paranormal sighting by a groundskeeper indicate that it’s less about the truth and more about those sweet viewership ratings, a sentiment that the sinister presence of the film shares.
In 2018, Jung Bum-shik helmed Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, a South Korean horror film with a similar premise to Grave Encounters. The corresponding hospital, Gonjiam, was commended for its wartime efforts but also hosted a number of dark rumors, from the hospital being built upon a site of mass executions of Korean resistance fighters to a “national torture prison” in the ’60s and ’70s disguised as an asylum. Not only do these investigators dare to tread the traumatized ground, they are doing it on October 26th – the day the asylum reportedly closed. Why? “To uncover the truth,” for the Horror Times vlog. Is it, though? Horror Times’ creator and director Ha-Joon (Wi Ha-joon) reveals on the way there that the climax of the show will be the opening of Room 402, the only locked room in the asylum – a cursed room.
The opening scene makes it clear: the creative collective split their time between a clinical assessment of the lore surrounding the asylum’s director and speculation on the views and revenue they’ll generate. In Grave Encounters 2, this sentiment is translated in one line: “We could get into Sundance.” One thing is immediately established among all vulture tourists – it’s all for the clout. You’ve got to hand it to the Horror Times crew: they didn’t just bring a couple of GoPros. Just outside of the asylum, these college kids parked a [massive] tent with their logo on banners beneath. Folding tables, generators, laptops, and even the GoPros. It’s not just a trespass, it’s squatting for views. As with the Blair Witch Project and Grave Encounters before it, Gonjiam’s main players enter a stage that doesn’t belong to them, and try to siphon greatness from it. Scarlett Marlowe (Perdita Weeks) of As Above, So Below took a more scholarly approach, trying to uncover the universal truths of the fabled Philosopher’s Stone. The 2014 film situates its people among the eerie catacombs of Paris, looking for truth behind a legend promising eternal life for those who uncover it. That’s the rub, isn’t it? So many of these people are looking for immortality, be it via celluloid or alchemy. Is it any wonder that those on the other side of the Great Veil might search for the same?
As with all genres over time, the found footage structure bifurcates and mutates until the catalogue resembles Whose Line is it Anyway, where the rules are made up and the points don’t matter. The entities in the Grave Encounters movies function not to protect a secret, but to expand and propagate through lore. They want to spread their influence on screen, like how Ringu’s Sadako exclusively traveled via VHS express and only broke her curse for those who passed it along (It Follows is another non-found footage variation on the theme). In its genre self-awareness, Steven DeGennaro’s 2016 found footage effort Found Footage 3D does the same; at one point, a character concludes aloud that the smoky, ethereal presence tormenting them actually wants to be filmed – the only reason a character is kept alive in such situations. As with Grave Encounters, it’s almost as though the evil forces ratify the impulses of those who trespass against them with those same motivations in mind – clout-chasing ghosts, if you will.
Lo and behold, the footage of the first Grave Encounters movie ends up in the hands of film student Alex (Richard Harmon) in the second one. Alex quickly forges an obsession with the events of the first GE movie. The footage and invitation to visit the asylum come via an anonymous online source with the handle “Death Awaits,” the same warning spray-painted on the doors of the asylum. He ignores the warnings, just as the Horror Times crew giggles their way past the characters “Enter and you will die” scrawled across a wall in Gonjiam. It’s a staple of the genre that is so prevalent that meat-horror Cabin in the Woods took notice in 2011 – the protagonists must not heed the warnings, it’s a part of the big show. The security guy of Grave Encounters 2 comes around and tries to shoo the youths away with unconvincing mutterings of “asbestos,” but indicates that he patrols the area often, untouched by the presence inside the building. A pair of rural locals make for unconvincing actors when asked to warn the stars away from a haunted house in Found Footage 3D – until the production assistant mentions the name of the place where they actually plan on filming their film within the film. Upon hearing the proposed setting, both men turn gravely serious and advise the crew to stay away from the abandoned central Texas house they’ve secured for production. They go anyway, what happens, happens. In Devil’s Pass, the warning crosses the language barrier: Pior Ketrov, a member of the original Dyatlov journey posts a handwritten sign at his hospital window before orderlies drag him out of view. The sign later translates as a warning: “Stay away.” The crew embarks anyway, and what happens, happens. These people are punished not for confronting the past, but for attempting to exploit it for a student project, a vlog, a monetized haunt, scholarly glory.
The takeaway is one that should be heeded as the world begins to open up again and white Judeo-Christian Americans dust off their passports: see the world, travel, have fun! But don’t you dare make it transactional, or you will rue the day. If you’re lucky, the spirits you’ve crossed will match your energy. The final moments of Grave Encounters 2 have the would-be auteur Alex discouraging viewers from making paranormal pilgrimages to the asylum, muttering, “It’s not worth it, there’s nothing there,” before the coordinates to the building flash onscreen, letting the krill tumble into the whale’s maw. What happens, happens.
