Today's entry is a little different from what we've been leaning towards this month. For starters, it's a BBC TV "movie." For seconds, it's in the style of a television investigative documentary. For dessert, we don't have a poster, but a DVD cover.
Also, apparently people thought it was real.
GHOSTWATCH (1992)
Blogtober Qualifications: Ghosts, England, haunting shapes, stock cat sound effects
I'm not going to write a synopsis in the style I usually do, since it's kind of hard to do that with this one.
Basically, real-life, actual television broadcaster Michael Parkinson hosts what is ostensibly a live broadcast of an investigation into the alleged haunting of a small house in England. We follow Parkinson and a bevy of other British television personalities playing themselves (including Red Dwarf's Craig Charles), as well as a few people playing fictional characters (including one woman I genuinely believed was Helen Hunt when I first saw her).
I'm having a hard time explaining it for some reason, but it's basically just a fake news broadcast centered on the goings-on in this house and the mother and two daughters who live there. The DVD cover and other sources call it a mockumentary, but for my money the show presents the events as if they're meant to be taken seriously. It's honestly a really interesting idea.
And it's actually pretty good.
I don't want to go into too much detail regarding the events, but suffice it to say that the programme (because we're British today) does a really good job of pulling you into it. It's actually kind of dull, but that actually adds to it, since it makes it that much more believable. It really feels like the BBC set up this whole "investigative" broadcast, not expecting it to really uncover anything serious. The presenters joke around here and there, and there's a breezy, slightly awkward nature to the early scenes that makes it feel realistic.
Of course, it wouldn't really be worth talking about if it actually turned out to be nothing, but I don't want to say too much. I will say that there is a very strong sense of building up atmosphere here, and the filmmakers did a great job in that regard.
It all builds really well, and once the spooky stuff starts happening in earnest, you're in the right frame of mind for it. I don't get scared easily by most things, so I like to have my wife watch with me, since she's a bit more susceptible. In this case, the scares definitely worked on her, to the point where she asked me to check out our own house once the "broadcast" was over. So the scares work well, but even more enjoyable than that, to me, are the little background elements.
A keen-eyed viewer will start to notice little things early on, in the background and in the camera swings. The show even plays into this (perfectly) by creating false background elements and making you question whether you actually saw anything at all. It's really clever.
I won't talk about the actors, since almost everyone is playing themselves, and, like I mentioned before, it's all realistically awkward. I will say that I was surprised at what a good job the two young girls did with the material. It's not amazing, but they're kids. I'm always impressed when kids manage not to be terrible.
So all in all, Ghostwatch is definitely worth your time. It could potentially be the beginning of an interesting genre of horror movies that we never see. We have tons of "found footage" movies, but almost none of these investigative-styled shows. I could stand to see more of this.
And no, "reality" shows don't count.
Tomorrow we hang out with the Antichrist. Yep.
Until next time!
Current interests:
Listening - King Crimson: In the Court of the Crimson King (1969)
Playing - Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle (2017)
Reading - B.P.R.D. Hell on Earth: The Exorcist (2016)
Watching - Thunderbirds Are Go! (2015)
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