A drama posing as a documentary, Ghostwatch borrows heavily from The Stone Tape (1972; dir. Peter Sasdy) and the true story of the Enfield Poltergeist. Despite unnecessary simplification, the story – which sees a broken home at the mercy of a sinister, perhaps imaginary spirit – remains true to the infamous 1977-78 case, which is still debated today despite claims of fraud and happenstance. What sets Ghostwatch apart from similar films like Poltergeist (1982; dir. Tobe Hooper) or The Legend of Hell House (1973; dir. John Hough), is its pseudo-live television broadcast format that seems eerily prescient of modern, ghost-themed Halloween scheduling. The film manages to predict the set-up of reality shows like Most Haunted Live (2002-Present) with such precision, right down to the comedy presenters and ineffectual mediums, that it seems highly unlikely that the producers of that show are unaware of Ghostwatch’s existence, and perhaps exposes the low height to which they are aiming in their so-called “paranormal investigations”.
Originally the film caused a stir amongst the British papers for purporting to be a real broadcast – despite the prominent albeit brief presence of a writer’s credit at the beginning – but the BBC soon pulled out of the debate by claiming that the programme had never intended to be a hoax. This is obviously lies: Manning uses the visual and aural paraphernalia of factual and live documentary productions to confuse the viewer’s understanding of these processes, blurring their acceptance of what they are seeing and hearing as ‘real’ with their willingness to be scared shitless. Even though, as previously mentioned, it owes more than a passing debt to Nigel Kneale (read more about him here – and writer Stephen Volk certainly has more sense of the brittle bitterness that informs Kneale’s work than his contemporaries), it seems a shame that the innovative techniques and sensibilities on show during Ghostwatch have today been relegated to depictions of superstitious, highly questionable content instead of moving outside of this supposed factual scenario and building extra layers of viewer-content-relationship onto productions across the board, ranging from drama to children’s shows.
The possibilities thrown up by the conflict between narrative conceit and final delivery are rife, and can move beyond mere manipulation – as demonstrated by Manning – and into the arenas of education and motivation. Instead of being spoon-fed sentimental, calculated narrative structures, the audience should be able to interact with the structure and material of a film to the extent that the finalised piece is nothing but a work in progress that develops beyond an initial screening into open debate and further action from the audience – take for example groundbreaking films like Fritänkaren (1994; dir. Peter Watkins). But what we have in 2009 are stilted and unimaginative reality programmes that strain credibility in their attempts to bring conventional dramatic weight into the fold, thereby negating any worth they hitherto proclaimed.
