Haunted Ulster Live (2023)

     The spirit of Stephen Volk's GHOSTWATCH is strong in this Irish production that uses the same approach as that BBC drama but tries to take things in a slightly different direction. 

It's Halloween 1998 and Northern Irish TV channel NITV are broadcasting a live special in which veteran TV presenter Gerry Burns (Mark Claney) and promising newcomer (tipped to be the next Blue Peter presenter) Michelle Kelly (Aimee Richardson) are hosting an investigation into an alleged haunted house in Belfast.

This includes interviewing the family who live there (a single mother and her two children), and bringing in a psychic, paranormal investigators with the usual barrage of temperature gauges and night vision photography. Oh, and they've also installed famous DJ Declan in the attic to play records and broadcast on the radio.

Strange things soon begin to happen. The little girl is put into a trance by the medium and seems possessed, the medium herself has a seizure, one of the experts brought in says that the house was built on the site of a standing stone and it seems the house has been the site of unnatural apparitions for many years.

So far so GHOSTWATCH, which managed to achieve what it set out to do rather better than HAUNTED ULSTER LIVE does. That's partly down to the fact that the finale is a bit garbled with ideas that riff on John Carpenter's PRINCE OF DARKNESS and Renny Harlin's  THE DYATLOV PASS INCIDENT. It's not a bad film at all, and if you liked GHOSTWATCH or LATE NIGHT WITH THE DEVIL you'll probably have a good time with this. it's just not quite up to the films it seems to have been inspired by.

HAUNTED ULSTER LIVE is out on digital platforms on Monday 14th October 2024