In 1998 a film crew goes to a haunted house on Halloween and does a live broadcast. As the presenters talk to the home owners and the ghosts things begin happening and the lives of everyone in the house wind up in danger.
Walking into the same territory as the infamous GHOSTWATCH which was a presented on the BBC with only a word of warning that it was fiction at the very beginning, HAUNTED ULSTER LIVE ends up being a very good little horror film that wobbles a bit in that it breaks its conceit as a live broadcast. It’s a film that lulls us into thinking it’s all a bit goofy before slowly turning up the screws.
I really liked this film a great deal. The point at which the film got into trouble for me was when the focus of the film shifted from being a straight on broadcast to showing us outside what the camera sees. While it is necessary because of what is going on, the films strengths is the copying of the broadcast. By jumping away from that the spell or the sense of this happening right before us is broken. It’s far from fatal but it makes what should have been a truly great film into a really good one.
My desire for a scary film to be even scarier this film has chills and as such is recommended.
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