Haunted Ulster Live

Haunted Ulster Live (2023)
Directed by: Dominic O'Neill
Written by: Dominic O'Neill
Starring: Aimee Richardson, Andrew Dickson, Antoinette Morelli, Dave Fleming, Mark Claney, Owen James, Siobhan Kelly

Haunted Ulster Live will appeal to fans of GhostWatch. For those who have never seen GhostWatch, it was a televised movie mockumentary  broadcast on BBC 1 that aired on Halloween in 1992. It was about a “live” broadcast of a poltergeist – no doubt where the “Live” part of Haunted Ulster Live derives from.  It was presented as a live news broadcast which was, in fact, recorded weeks prior. Famously, and problematically, many viewers believed the broadcast to be genuine adding to quite the stramash in the BBCs complaints department. Several factors played into the misunderstanding; the BBC barely hinted at the deception, it was filmed with well known broadcasters and newscasters, notably Parkinson himself, who were known to the public, it’s titling “Ghostwatch” was analogous to another British TV show of the era called “Crimewatch”, and the film is committed to realism. There’s an investigation, no one really believes in the supernatural so there’s a “lull them into a false sense of security” feel before it all gets very real, very quickly. Ghostwatch even had a number you could call, and due to the excessive number of calls received, many callers got the “line busy” message. This did not help. The BBC received backlash from viewers and the press and Ghostwatch has never been aired since.

But this is a review of Haunted Ulster Live, not Ghostwatch. But I’d personally feel I’d be doing Haunted Ulster Live a disservice not to mention Ghostwatch in this review. Haunted Ulster Live follows in Ghostwatch’s  footsteps, it even displays  a ‘phone number’ you can call. But this time, we the audience, have a safety net. We see this movie-within-a-movie knowing that IT IS a movie. There are scenes where the actors play for the camera and then we see them have cigarette breaks between scenes. And this is where I’ll need to mention the performances, which are great. The actors have to perform twice, they have to act as actors between scenes and then perform as those actors would perform on camera. It’s like Batman, any actor performing this role will play their Bruce Wayne scenes differently from their Batman scenes. All Batman actors do that, (cough … cough … George Clooney … cough).

I like that the movie starts with the tail end of a news report. Video recordings of early 90s commonly held such mistimings. A fun, and surprisingly nostalgic, detail. The film starts proper with an intro from the DJ Declan located in the attic of the haunted house, introduces us to the “Ice FM TVNI Spooktacular”. He is always filmed in black and white spends most of the movie at arm’s length from the films events. It’s hard not to think of him as padding, and I was left pondering  the films length, and how much would be excised if all his scenes were removed. Because, once it’s all said and done, he’s not a necessary character.

Michelle Kelly, Aimee Richardson, and Gerry, Mark Claney, are the lead newscasters leading us through the show, in front of and behind the scenes. They are sceptics but its fine, they are getting paid, Michelle is looking forward to her career progression, Blue Peter, and Gerry is looking to retire gracefully.

Of course, true believers soon arrive and stir things up. Robert Pratt, Dave Fleming, and Sinead Love, Antoinette Morelli. Their introductions are hilarious and we are clearly not meant to take these characters seriously. Predictably, neither of these two have any ability to control the evil in the McKillen’s house.

I really appreciated the humour in this. A “Ghosthunter” using pretentious terminology for a thermostat, and during obligatory vox pop, an interviewed member of the public makes up a “well-known” song to the tune of Postman Pat.

Sarah McKillen, Siobhan Kelly, gives an honest portrayal of a put-upon mother who has no time for the supernatural shenanigans. She wants her daughter to live a normal life. A life where the word “super” does not precede “natural”.

There is a belief that the ghost of John Yuill still haunts the house the McKillens  live in. The most authentic photo of a ghost ever taken is of him looking morose, perhaps lost, in a doorway. Our team of newscasters set out to “prove” it’s real. They run into problems when an entity known as Black Foot Jack starts making his presence felt. It sounds plausible enough, reminding me of London’s own Spring heeled Jack. Black foot Jack is named such because he leaves black footprints wherever he goes. When I say the black painted hands with long fingernails appear, I felt the film was skirting almost on the wrong side of black-and-white dualism.

Will Black Foot Jack become the next Slender Man? I kinda hope not.

The behind the scenes drama was where this film really shines. Adding layers of drama can really up the tension very quickly. When the supernatural threat becomes even more apparent, nerves are frayed and no one knows how to handle the situation.

Ghostwatch predated, by several years, the “found footage” phenomena and is therefore delightfully free of all the usual trappings of the genre. The same cannot be said for Haunted Ulster Live, which draws on cliché and trope to keep the scares coming. And some of these scares are LOUD. This film will literally keep you up, not at night but just for the duration. There are misunderstood spooky messages, closing doors, images of a standing stone out on a moor, a temporarily possessed child, and a little bit of time-skipping.

There were sound effects that I recognised from elsewhere. And not the Wilhelm scream for once. There’s a static sound effect I recognise from Hellraiser, when Kirsty Cotton in the hospital and her television is all screwy.

This was entertaining. A lot was done with the small budget. And the local accents definitely helped ground this movie in the way the writer/director Dominic O’Neill intended. Whilst it’s not funny enough to be a comedy, nor scary enough to be a horror. It was definitely dramatic, but it’s not a drama. But it was still a damn good time.

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