While Ghostwatch will always hold a place in my heart as the BBC drama that inadvertently terrified me and a generation and was at least partly responsible for kindling the fascination with found footage and mockumentary horrors and the way in which certain publicity methods and media, in general, can create a special type of buzz around films almost greater than the film itself, it's not the only film out there to utilise this format. Today we're taking a look at the WNUF Halloween Special, a "film" I'd been wanting to see since it first came out but which I only got around to seeing it last night.
It's October 31, 1987, and television channel WNUF is broadcasting their special Halloween programming. Among the safety tips for trick-or-treaters, a local dentist's "Cash for Candy" scheme and a segment on a Christian group who believe that the holiday is evil and that all those who participate in it will come to an unpleasant end, the highlight of the night is a live broadcast from the Webber House, a local property that has stood empty since the brutal murders of Mr and Mrs Webber by their son 20 years previously. The son claimed that he had been driven to commit the murders by demonic spirits after using an Ouija board, and many people have claimed that the house is still haunted by those spirits. Reporter Frank Stewart plans to broadcast a live investigation into the house, with a Catholic priest and a psychic investigator couple and their "psychic" cat Shadow, and even hold a phone-in seance in the house on live TV. Almost from the moment they enter the house, however, the psychics begin to feel that there is a threatening presence in the house and that they are in danger. Frank is flippant about the whole situation though and demands the investigation and broadcast continue, even after the investigators' equipment is smashed and Shadow goes missing. Clearly, someone or something is in the Webber House with Frank and the others; will this live broadcast prove the existence of ghosts, or will this all end badly for the crew?
As I said at the start, I've wanted to see the WNUF Halloween Special since it came out in 2013; I couldn't bring myself to watch it until last night, however, because the moment I learned there was a cat going into the house I had a terrible feeling about what that would mean for poor Shadow. To say whether I was right or wrong would constitute a spoiler though, and since the WNUF Halloween Special is best experienced knowing as little as possible going in, all I'll say is that I succeeded in watching it, and I'm glad I did - even if my heart was pounding with the horrible anticipation of potential cat death for parts of it.
The whole gimmick of the WNUF Halloween Special is that it's an old VHS recording of the live broadcast from 1987, complete with static, the occasional tracking error and even ad breaks and local TV ads (which reminds me, must go down to Phil's Carpet Warehouse). This serves to both give the film a massive dose of cinema verite authenticity, and also give a massive dose of nostalgia for anyone watching who grew up in the 1980s. Granted, some of this was lost on me because UK 80s TV was pretty different from US 80s TV, but I can still appreciate the effect the film was going for. I will say that the frequency of the ads did start to grate on me after a while, and the pacing did start to suffer as a result of them as the film progressed, especially with the way the film would "fast-forward" through the ads on several occasions. It did keep with the concept that this is an old VHS tape that we're watching and that we're just skipping through some of the "boring bits", but it was really a very fine line between immersion and boring that they trod with this idea.
The WNUF Halloween Special does succeed in creating the right kind of atmosphere though. You really could believe that this was broadcast in the 1980s, on a small local channel, and that people just stumbled on it that Halloween night in 1987, not realising what they were tuning into and remaining transfixed as the events unfolded. You can see that it learned its craft from some of the greats (although your mileage may vary) of the past - The Last Broadcast, The Poughkeepsie Tapes, The Blair Witch Project and possibly even Ghostwatch itself, from framing to the potentially unreliable narrator (because hey, this could still be just one big hoax, right?)
The atmosphere in which you watch the WNUF Halloween Special is also key to how much you enjoy it, I think. I was lucky enough to watch it as part of a group, where we kept up the conceit that the events we were watching really happened, at least in part for the people (like me) who hadn't seen it before. Of course, we knew it was all fiction, but it was fun for those 82 minutes to really suspend disbelief and get properly into it. I certainly think I wouldn't have had the same enjoyable experience if I'd watched it on my own in a drier, more analytical setting, so take that as you will. But if you're like me and enjoy things like Ghostwatch and Local58, then you should definitely give the WNUF Halloween Special a watch.