Ghostwatch (1992)

That was an excellent one.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Blistering performances.

Ugh. It looks like nineties TV. Such an ugly time for TV. It sounded pretty good really. At least in the nineties TV sounded good. It is a nice idea and it is a little creepy with some fear edging in towards the end but there are problems. I thought that the climax would go one- step further but it didn't. Also some of the acting was pretty poor - most of these people are presenters and not actors so it is pretty unconvincing. If you thought that this was real then it would have been very good but I knew otherwise and would have spotted that it was fake pretty quickly if I hadn't known. Ultimately a nice idea and a nice experiment that didn't quite work or stand the test of time.

I can understand why this show scared people when it came out. Filmed like some BBC live documentary, the show looks generally real. There are some places where the editing or camera-work would not have happened that way in a real live show, but I would expect people wouldn't think about that, and obviously kids wouldn't notice.The problem with Ghostwatch is because it wants to be convincingly real, it starts out convincingly slowly. Over the first half hour there are talking-heads style interviews and general chit chat and information stuff that would only interest people who were really interested in seeing a ghost documentary. In fact, I suspect one reason this show was so effective is that the most skeptical people would have tuned out through boredom early on, leaving only believers watching by the end.After the first tedious half hour I decided to fast forward until it looked like something interesting was going on. I wound up moving ahead another half hour.But once you're into the last third of the movie, things get pretty intense. Even if you know it's a mockumentary, the final moments are truly chilling, and I can only imagine how terrifying this was to those who thought it was a real documentary.Keep an eye out for ghostly apparitions. I missed most of them, although there is a youtube video that collects them all.

I was 12 years old, just happened to be at home watching TV on Haloween of 1992, Ghostwatch came on and looked interesting so I continued to watch it, thinking it was an interesting bit of fun with maybe the chance of something happening in the most haunted house in England! Then half way through the reality TV show started to turn into a truly scary experience, with things going wrong and the fact the viewer believed it was recorded live (which was later revealed was not) made it an experience that will most likely never be achieved again! There is a part where viewers rang the show live from their homes and reported all kinds of scary things happening, for example their dogs wont stop barking and a Glass table shattering after being touched etc, this all added to the realism and also made all the viewers paranoid that something was going to happen in their own home! (I was one of them) This show was the most scary thing ever created by any production company in the world, and I understand why it was banned for 10 years (due to a couple of people committing suicide for believing it was real apparently) when I watch it now it seems clear that the children were acting, but at the time it was not so obvious! If you plan on letting your children watch this be careful, because they will get scared and may not sleep for a few nights! A real masterpiece!

I was only three when this film was televised, so I slip into the category of viewers who knew this was a hoax before they watched it. For most of the film, beyond my wishes, I found myself evaluating the validity of the actors' performances, and debating how someone could have thought this was real (the performances are pretty good, but there are certain exchanges that sway more towards theatrical than realistic). However, halfway in, when the transmission starts becoming infrequent and begins cutting out, my skin started crawling. Even the knowledge that it was fictional couldn't suppress my nerves as the ghost manifested itself in more terrifying ways. The finale, with a possessed Michael Parkinson whispering a nursery rhyme into the camera, sends a lasting sensation through the viewers' minds, in spite of how amusing it sounds on paper.As mentioned before, there are a few faults in the acting, but for the most part - especially during the scariest scenes where it counts most - it is utterly convincing and contributes to a rather shocking viewer experience. The visual quality of the "live" broadcast and the Crimewatch-esquire set-up of the studio lend the film enough credibility to have some viewers forget that this was just a teleplay for the BBC, but this is exactly what sets it apart from other horror films and, in a way, makes it so much creepier.