Haunted Ulster Live (2023) Ghostwatch… with Laughs (Review)

Arriving just in time for Halloween this year, Haunted Ulster Live is another addition to the horror subgenre that can perhaps best be described as “fake live Halloween broadcast”. Late Night with the Devil earned plenty of plaudits earlier this year, and back in 2018 Inside Number 9‘s Dead Line managed to wrongfoot its audience (no mean feat in the social media era), but this Northern Irish take pays tribute to the daddy of them all – Stephen Volk’s 1992 BBC drama Ghostwatch.

Broadcast on Halloween night in 1992, Ghostwatch was an infamous pseudo-documentary that was billed as an instalment of the BBC filmed drama series Screen One, but not everyone seemed aware of that fact. The reassuring and respectable faces of presenters Michael Parkinson, Sarah Greene, and Mike Smith, complete with an outside broadcast from “Britain’s most haunted house”, studio debates with sceptics and experts, and “live” phone-ins convinced many households that what they were watching was a real attempt by the BBC to explore of what lay beyond our world. The façade was so convincing that Ghostwatch hoodwinked and terrified the great British public, achieving TV notoriety and erroneously going down in screen history as one of the greatest hoaxes of our times.

Written and directed by Dominic O’Neill, Haunted Ulster Live reverentially takes the DNA of Ghostwatch and puts its own darkly comedic, Northern Irish spin on the subgenre. The premise is that “NITV” (Northern Irish Television), broadcast a purportedly live show on the 31st October 1998, in which our hosts Gerry Burns (Mark Clancey), and Michelle Kelly (Aimee Richardson), are tasked with investigating the home of the McKillens. This single parent family, made up of mother Sarah (Siobhan Kelly), and her children Stephen (Jay Lowey), and Rose (Libby McBride), believe that their home is haunted by the sinister “Blackfoot Jack” – a local legend whose sooty footsteps are found by their bedsides, while something strange and inexplicable is going on in the attic. Believing they have a fun and relatively inconsequential show that will dominate the Halloween evening’s schedules, the team at NITV rope in ley lines expert Robert (David Fleming), spirit medium Sinead (Antoinette Morelli), and the “ghostbusting” team at the Northern Ireland Paranormal Research Association (NIPRA), which is headed up by Kyle (Owen James). Local DJ Declan (Dan Leith), broadcasts live and non-stop from the spooky attic, playing records to raise funds for Victim Support Northern Ireland – a reminder that the region was still haunted by the very real horror of the Troubles at the time the story takes place. It isn’t long before the things really do start to go bump in the night as paramedics are called to a medical emergency, while a possessed Rose heads towards the attic, and it’s all preserved for posterity by a television show that, we learn, hasn’t been repeated in 25 years.

Cynics may argue that at a time when appetites are strong for variants of the “found footage”/”faux TV show” horror subgenre, O’Neill’s film is simply drinking from the well of Ghostwatch, but they’re missing what makes Haunted Ulster Live so special. Yes, O’Neill has created a loving homage to the controversial BBC classic, but he’s also crafted a similarly affectionate tribute to television itself – specifically those live outside broadcasts at the dawn of the new millennium. O’Neill’s attention to detail in paying due reverence is breathtakingly good and deeply amusing.

There are many examples, including the lovingly recreated TV idents and graphics, but I’ll just single out a few here: the young and glamourous blonde presenter Michelle, who is hotly tipped to join Blue Peter (a move that fellow Northern Irish girl Zoe Salmon genuinely achieved in 2004) and clad in sparkly hen night devil horns for the occasion, spends much of the night either interviewing Joe Public on the street outside the McKillens, or in something laughingly called the “Ghost Tent”, where the NIPRA monitor events. In a later sequence out on the street, a trio of little girls dressed as Power Rangers assemble to eagerly announce “It’s morphing time!”, with Michelle cheesily concluding “I think the neighbourhood’s safe tonight” at the sight of this (twee to our eyes now) pop cultural reference, before throwing back to the events indoors. Equally, her co-presenter Gerry Burns (his name possibly alluding to Belfast born journalist and host of The Krypton Factor Gordon Burns), a middle-aged man who introduces Robert as “a world wide web wiz” and believes the internet to be “like Ceefax with more pages”, is a Partridge-esque presence dressed and styled in a terribly 90s aesthetic that is familiar to anyone with a penchant for regional television. Later, with Rose missing and things starting to get seriously wrong inside the house, the show’s belligerent English producer David (Andrew Dickson) is left to consider pulling the broadcast in favour of a repeat of that cosy Sunday night staple of the 90s, Heartbeat, and bemoans that Gerry and Michelle weren’t even his choices to host. “I wanted Eamon Holmes and Tina Campbell! Serious journalists”

If all this sounds comedic, it’s because it is meant to be. Whilst Haunted Ulster Live isn’t an out and out comedy horror like Zombieland or Shaun of the Dead, O’Neill clearly knows that his homage to Ghostwatch and TV of years gone by requires some sly fun. I laughed out loud at the V/T reel introducing the spiritualist Sinead which sees a man bring to her an ashtray he believes the spirit of his dead wife has become attached too. “How did she die?” Sinead asks. “Lung cancer” is the deadpan reply. I did so again when Michelle interviews one resident of the street about what he knows about the legend to Blackfoot Jack. Eager for his brief shot at fame, he tells her there was a song about him they used to sing as kids, before proceeding to sing the refrain of “Blackfoot Jack, Blackfoot Jack” to the tune of Postman Pat. Other examples of humour make light of the situation Northern Ireland found itself in at the time. When the poltergeist strikes, Michelle is eager to advise viewers at home that the loud bang they have just heard was not a security incident. Later, she learns the folly of placing a microphone in front of Joe Public when one old man starts grumbling about the “Fenians” down the street. Kyle also stumbles over the abbreviation of his paranormal research association, and the momentary look of panic in his eyes as he says “the NPIRA” rather than the “NIPRA”, a moment that is subtly hilarious. Later, a commercial break depicts a moodily shot, affectionate spoof of a public information film in which a gunman shoots a taxi driver dead. “Do you have a killer in your home?” it asks. “Don’t suffer it. Change it” the voice over intones, before a caption directs viewers to a confidential hotline to to voice your suspicions.

What elevates Haunted Ulster Live above the comic horror trappings is an assured and intelligent grasp of the horror it wishes to explore. Again, anyone who may initially dismiss it as little more than a variation on Ghostwatch may be pleased to see where O’Neill chooses to step off the path of his inspiration and on to an intriguing route towards metaphysics and the folk mythology of ley lines and standing stones. It’s a rich subject matter and a canny twist that is worth pondering, and one I imagine that audiences of the film will benefit more from on a second or even third viewing – no hardship given that this is a fun and very tight 75 minutes – as the conclusion may feel a little abstract or muddled on an initial watch. This is a minor grievance considering how well O’Neill has built tension (and offset it with flashes of humour) leading up to this final act however, and in any case we must give him kudos for trusting his audience’s intelligence to pick up the clues that have led us to that moment, rather than lead us all by the nose.

Of course, none of this would pay off half as well if Haunted Ulster Live didn’t have some good actors and solid characterisation. Aimee Richardson is arguably the take home from this, as the ambitious young presenter Michelle Kelly. In some hands this could be a pretty vapid character, but Richardson’s comic abilities, combined with her ability to both evoke and showcase empathy, proves that a lot of talent and personality can flesh out the barest of bones. Likewise, Mark Clancey does admirable work as her mature co-presenter, Gerry Burns. As I mentioned earlier, Gerry is a vainglorious figure that is easy to ridicule, but both O’Neill and Clancey take great pains to show us, through his mix of easy, homespun charm and complete professionalism, just why old school presenters like him became stalwarts in the first place. When a later sequence calls for him to display previously unseen reserves of bravery, the figure of fun slips away completely. Beyond its affinity at recreating a time and place, it is this moment that illustrates what is arguably Haunted Ulster Live‘s key strength, namely how it perfectly toes the line between the comedy and drama required for its narrative.

An impressive, low budget directorial debut, Haunted Ulster Live is available on UK and Ireland digital platforms from 14 October.

Mark’s Archive – Haunted Ulster Live (2023)