A pair of TV presenters spend Halloween Night 1998 broadcasting live from a haunted house in
Belfast.
Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Dominic O'Neill
Starring: Mark Claney, Aimée Richardson, Siobhan Kelly Dave Fleming, Antoinette
Morelli
Just like Daft Punk's first Essential Mix or the televised moon
landings, Lesley Manning and
Stephen Volk's Ghostwatch is a pop culture artefact which has
achieved mythical status: everyone who saw/heard it the first time
remembers where they were when it happened, and those who weren't
initially there wish forever that they had been. Regarding the legendary
circumstances of its broadcast ("honest guvnor, we presented it as a
fictional film" etc), the experience of watching
Ghostwatch as it first transpired on October 31st 1992 is
impossible to relive, and, due to the nature of today's digital media,
probably just as insurmountable to replicate (Volk did, however, write a
short story sequel-recommended). This hasn't stopped people having a go
though, viz. WNUF Halloween Special, bits of that
V/H/S series
and the recent
Late Night With the Devil
being within Ghostwatch's meta-tradition but offering diminished returns (alright, there was
the ace episode of Inside No.9 which, to be fair, did
actually seem to fool some of the people for some of its running time-
"Oh Bobbah!"). And, in a timely spooky season release, here is
Dominic O'Neill's Haunted Ulster Live, a homage with such narrative and representational fealty to Manning
and Volk's masterpiece that it could well be a remake...
(Disclosure: Ghostwatch is not only one of my favourite
films ever but one of my favourite actual things, up there with hot tea
or Prince or rollercoasters. I'm obsessed and watch it every Hallowe'en,
once on the big screen too, swank swank. I've interviewed Mr Volk and
met him on several occasions since, including a time where he spilled a
big jug of water over a table in Abergavenny Waterstones: amazing.
Ghostwatch epitomises horror viewing, where the mode of
consumption is mirrored by the film itself, as ordinary people in an
ordinary house are haunted as we're watching in our equally quotidian
circumstances which are increasingly destabilised: the family TV set
itself must have suddenly seemed evil... ("like somebody’s mum,"
perhaps). I love the blithe cruelty of it, the betrayal of trust in
deploying actual Parkinson, Sarah Greene etc, and the concurrent sense
that in the '90s, along with stuff like The Day Today, pop culture was turning itself inside out for the fun of it. And it's
scary, too. That whip pan where we see Pipes in the kid's room, where
the camera looks back and he's gone; that two/three second moment
frightened me more than any other horror film ever and is the reason I
still can't walk around my house at night if the lights are off
fml).
Haunted Ulster Live is Very Much Like
Ghostwatch, a point that some reviewers have taken dismissive umbrage against (I
accidentally broke my rule of not reading anything about a film before
writing on it, as way before this commission I picked up on
Haunted Ulster Live's festival run review), but nonetheless is an aspect of the film
acknowledged by the filmmakers to the point of pride. Set at the end of
the '90s, we are witness to a live Halloween broadcast from a suburban
house wherein an exhausted single mother and her wall-eyed teens are
apparently haunted by a poltergeist with urban folklore links to the
local area. The intertextual trick or treats are manifest, from the
blokey bts tech crew to a fella in a red mask standing imposingly in the
background of the gathered crowd outside (at one point, the familiarity
caused me a Pavlovian scan of the frame to try and spot any hidden
Pipes... the habit of Ghostwatch rewatches).
Does this matter? With the essential pleasures of horror so primal and
direct, the genre is necessarily cyclical as audiences repeatedly seek
its dark sensations (I always think that, say, slashers, are like house
music: variations on an insistent theme played at the same bpm, with
just enough idiosyncratic twists and novelties to keep you dancing). The
mode is reflective, and in an ongoing dialogue with itself, too (an
extempore example is that
exorcism film with Russell Crowe
from this year, where he plays an actor performing as an exorcist in a
plot which is wink-wink based on the filming of the actual
The Exorcist; I think it was called "The Process of Ridding a Host from Demonic
Influence"). All of which is to say that I'm ok with horror films
ripping off other horror films, of building upon them and referencing
them, even if the end result is a dilution of that unicorn phenomena
which is the wholly original horror film.
You'll either get over the influence
Haunted Ulster Live enjoys from
Ghostwatch or not, and my advice would be to allow it.
Because while O'Neill does take the Ghostwatch template
and effectively xerox it, he then colours outside the lines in
intriguing shades (another acknowledgement is the ominous intertitle
presented in the same tenor and font as
The Blair Witch Project - this is a film unnecessarily
apologetic about its inspirations). Aside from the comedy (which is
present in Ghostwatch's Welsh caller, but more conspicuous here: the first "picture" of the
ghost made me laugh out loud) which O'Neill engages,
Haunted Ulster Live is essentially a character study, and
the sort of archetypes which lesser films depict with easy-going
superficiality are given engaging development within. O'Neill elects not
to focus on the beleaguered family, instead illustrating the presenters
of the show – Michelle played by Aimee Richardson and
Mark Claney's Gerry, the two effectively enacting the du jour old
hand/pyt dynamic - with increasingly sympathetic detail.
Gerry is primarily presented as an old hat, embittered man on the telly
(the dialogue invokes common enemy Eamonn Holmes), with Michelle an
(unfairly) stereotyped ditz, but as the film progresses, both characters
display heroism beyond their stereotype and challenge our assumptions.
In the case of Gerry, it's as if Roger Mellie bopped Pipes on the nose
or something, while Michelle combats the inherent sexism of the '90s (?)
television industry. Along with this, there are two psychics who are
brought in within the diegesis, and whom, especially in the case of
Sinead (Antoinette Morelli - sensational) enrich the proceedings
with unexpected emotional resonance. I mean, I do love
Ghostwatch but it never made me tear up in the way a few
scenes here did...
O'Neill's gimmickry is twofold: primarily there is
Haunted Ulster Live's meta relationship with its predecessors but there is also the
established conceit of live television, the latter of which is
intriguingly developed and extended within this reflective plot
structure (does it hold together? Not sure, but I'm looking forward to
watching this again, probably as part of my family Hallowe'en marathon).
And, also, most importantly, there are moments, these cold slivers,
which transcend narrative chicanery and reach genre perfection by virtue
of being really creepy. Could Haunted Ulster Live give me
yet another reason to feel uncomfortable in my house, in the dark, alone
with the lingering images of spilled blood, sooty footprints and a
solitary hand pressed against a cold window?
Haunted Ulster Live is on UK/ROI
VOD from October 14th.
