Ghostwatch (1992)

Trailer:

*Spoilers Throughout*

What’s It About: A ghost watches, while we try to watch for the ghost. Presented as a real live ghost show on the BBC that confused a lot of confused people.

Here are some of my observations as I watched the film:

• Wait, BRITS???!!
• What’s the difference between pedophile and paedophile? Just a different country spelling thing? Like labor-labour? Anyway, this equipment guy Alan looks like one of those. Maybe both. Or a woodchuck rapist.
• There’s a lot of weird British things going on that I don’t understand. Like “cameraman.”
• These little British girls have a fantastic MC Hammer poster on their bedroom wall. Please, Hammer, don’t haunt ’em.
• Ha! They call the room under the stairs a “glory hole”??
• These people aren’t bad actors or anything, but you can just tell the difference between someone telling a real story off the cuff and someone delivering lines, which they’re clearly doing. I just don’t understand how anyone could think this was real, but they did.
• I’m not necessarily bored but it would be nice if things kicked into the next gear soon.
• This Dr. Emilio Sylvestri couldn’t look less Italian. At least I could understand him because he was speaking American.
• I thought this was going to be about a haunted timepiece.
• This family has the smallest refrigerator I’ve ever seen. No wonder that ghost is so pissed.
•  This is like Grave Encounters with non-douchebag characters.
• One of these reporters is wearing a Chicago Bears jacket! It’s weird since this is England, but GO BEARS!
• I knew this girl was full of shit. You can tell by her British accent.
• Caller says, “My kids won’t stop staring at the TV!” Well, turn it off dummy.
• This parapsychologist woman’s perm is the scariest part. It’s hair-raising! *catty*
• Speaking of catty, ghost cats just scratched the shit out of that lying girl’s face. That’s what you get for your betrayal, you Benedict Arnold!

• AHH I JUST SAW A GHOST! I KEEP TRYING TO CALL THE NUMBER ONSCREEN AND GET NOTHING! IF YOU CAN READ THIS, HELP!!

  

  GRANDPA STOP IT!
• This sequence when the shit goes down is pretty wicked.
• Again how anyone could have ever thought this was actually real is insane.
• At the very end the show gets a magical phone call that explains everything about most things.
• I was wondering when this thermal vision camera would come into play.
• Why isn’t the house flooded with other people and cops right now?
• Everything in the studio goes haywire, which is kind of dumb.
• God damn cats. I cannot stress this enough.

Is It Actually Scary: Actually, yeah. We’re spoiled now by this kind of found footage ghost movie, but it’s mostly done really well and there are a lot of eerie parts.

How Much Gore: None, outside of the older girl getting ghost cat scratches on her face. It’s unknown if she developed cat scratch fever as a result.

Best Scene: Pretty sweet piece of camera trickery that kicks off the sequence of things really going apeshit.

Worst Scene: I guess they wanted the viewers to think that the ghost was going to actually come through their TVs and haunt them, but the ending where all the equipment in the studio gets possessed is pretty hokey and makes the whole thing too absurd when it should’ve just stuck to the unsettling things going on in the house.

Any Nudity: I can’t be sure what I saw… was that the ghost’s… dong?

Overall: This is the grandaddy of all ghostly found footage movies in that it gives you a nickel to rub its feet, yells at neighborhood squirrels and tells you the same stories over and over again about all the Nazi hookers it banged in the war. It really is effective, especially if you’re watching it alone, in the dark, on your iPad, with headphones on, and an aggressive entity constantly pawing at your genitals. If you love the Paranormal Activity series… you’re probably reading this during 9th grade homeroom. But you should check this out regardless of your grandfather’s age. There are some stupid and slow moments, but overall it’s creepy and disturbing and I just cannot stop describing your grandfather in this paragraph, I’m sorry.

Score: 8 god damn cats (out of 10)

Bonus: Here are grown adults complaining that the show fooled them into thinking it was real, and how the scary ghost show unfairly scared them and their children who shouldn’t have been watching it in the first place. It’s just unbelievable: