THIS REVIEW CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS.
by Jarrod Jones. I watch ghost stories because, as a skeptic, I secretly want to believe. Well, not really. But, like most people, I enjoy the sensation of being successfully duped. The better-made supernatural horror movies will suspend my personal disbeliefs concerning poltergeists and other so-called phenomena for the length of a feature film; for a time, I can shut off my pedant’s brain, get lost in the dark, and marvel at how white my knuckles have gone.
The thing is, I go into a horror movie with at least an awareness of what to expect; if it is made well, I’ll experience a fright or two. My heart might jump a couple of times. The point is: I signed up for this, so when I’m scared, fair’s fair. I can only imagine the furor kicked up by unsuspecting viewers in the United Kingdom following the BBC’s 1992 Halloween broadcast of Ghostwatch. Most families thought they were spending an evening watching a spooky drama on the telly. What they got instead was more on par with Orson Welles’ paradigm-shifting CBS radio recreation of The War of the Worlds. (Incidentally, also a Halloween broadcast.)
You’ve heard stories about how millions of people in the United States worked themselves into a paranoid froth during Welles’ reading of HG Wells’ 1898 science-fiction novel. Despite his effectiveness in mocking up what a Martian invasion would actually sound like on 1938 radio, don’t believe them. The reactions to Ghostwatch, on the other hand, were very real, with the BBC reporting over 20,000 people jamming up its call centers that night in an attempt to understand the veracity of what they were watching. Were the horrors unfolding in real time… actually happening? “People felt The BBC was something they could trust,” Stephen Volk, the creator of Ghostwatch, said in 2017. “The programme [sic] had destroyed that trust.”
What they were watching was possibly the most inventive piece of horror ever produced for television. Ghostwatch, written by Volk and directed by Lesley Manning, was presented as a live investigation into “the most haunted house in the UK,” with “live” segments shot inside a home located in the fictional and purportedly doomed Greater London area called Foxhill Drive, with the parapsychiatrist Dr. Lin Pascoe (Gillian Bevan) watching from the safety of the network’s famous Studio One. We’re watching the lives of Pamela Early (Brid Brennan) and her daughters Suzanne (Michelle Wesson) and Kim (Cherise Wesson) fall apart at the whims of a demonic spirit the young girls refer to as “Mr. Pipes.” For skeptics like me, their predicament is ridiculous. Yet, the way Ghostwatch is made, I still buy it, even though history and sense tell me it’s not real.
To sell the gravity of a BBC production, Manning employed all the cutting-edge technology she had in her possession: infrared cameras, cold sensors, and an early version of a digital stylus were put to use. They’re around not just for legitimacy but to play around with the viewer’s sense of reality. One moment caught on camera in the sisters’ shared bedroom seems to show the outline of a man standing by their window. Dr. Pascoe uses the stylus to outline what she thinks could be seen as a human shape, but neither she nor her host believes anything is there. The thing is, we see it, or him, standing there, with the maximum clarity the grainy video will allow. This creates a sensation that Manning and Volk are breaking the fourth wall, so we might begin to suspect that what’s haunting the Early family might have infiltrated our homes, too.
Perhaps most controversially, Ghostwatch employed actual BBC talent to host the 91-minute program: the “live” segments shot at Foxhill featured Sarah Greene, a known TV personality seen on, among other things, a real documentary series named Hospital Watch; the studio segments were presented by venerated talk show host Michael Parkinson, whose seasoned manner gives the show serious bona fides as well as as a feeling of safety — after all, nothing could possibly go wrong with Sir Michael on the screen… right?
“No creaking gates, no Gothic towers, no shutter windows,” Parkinson says at the top of the hour. “Tonight, television is going ghost-hunting in an unprecedented scientific experiment.” Parkinson’s steady hand guides us through everything in Ghostwatch: he navigates the foolishness of Craig Charles (in life an English comedian, here operating as a newscaster under the same name), who fields reactions from the Early’s wary neighbors; when Sarah begins to see strange things in the house, Parkinson brings us back into the bright lights of the studio to talk with a cynical scientist who’s out to disprove the concept of ghosts.
It’s after Pascoe begins to grow frightfully concerned about the footage beamed into the studio that Parkinson lets his mask of professional competency slip. When he snaps at Pascoe about what’s going on in the Early home (“You’re the expert!”), it’s difficult not to feel like what we’re watching has seriously shifted its axis. What happens next is something you should experience for yourself; luckily, Ghostwatch dropped on Blu-ray this month.
I hope you give it a spin. Ghostwatch is like witnessing a puzzle being put together, shifting its final image as it goes, forcing you to reevaluate where the pieces should land, wondering if a solution is even possible. As more information about the history of the Early House takes shape, the more we understand this spectral monster called Pipes — just when you think you’ve got an idea of what you’re looking at — everything changes. The uncertainty is stifling. It’s terrifying. I don’t believe in ghosts. But when I put on Ghostwatch, for its 90-minute runtime and possibly a few moments beyond that, I’m changed. I’m a believer.
9.5 out of 10
Ghostwatch is available on Blu-ray now. For purchasing information, click this.
Directed by Lesley Manning.
Written and created by Stephen Volk.
Edited by Chris Swanton.
Starring Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, Mike Smith, Craig Charles, Gillian Bevan, Keith Ferrari, Brid Brennan, Michelle Wesson, and Cherise Wesson.
Produced by Richard Broke, Ruth Baumgarten, and Derek Nelson.
Not rated. Contains a fearsome amount of uncertainty and some lore-specific unpleasantness.
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