Rating: B-
Dir: Cameron Cairnes, Colin Cairnes
Star: David Dastmalchian, Laura Gordon, Ian Bliss, Ingrid Torelli
Fading talk-show host Jack Delroy (Dastmalchian) has a plan to boost his late-night program in the rating. It’s Halloween night, so he has invited on a medium, skeptic Carmichael Haig (Bliss, the character obviously modelled on James Randi), parapsychologist June Ross-Mitchell (Gordon), and the young girl June has been studying as a potential case of possession, Lily (Torelli). No, really: what could possibly go wrong? Initially, things are fine. The medium does his stuff, communicating with the spirit of an audience member’s dead son. But things start to go awry soon after, with him unwittingly channelling the spirit of Jack’s late wife, before projectile vomiting up black fluid, and having to be taken to hospital.
It’s when June and Lily show up that things inexorably escalate. Despite Haig’s efforts to debunk things as mass hypnotic suggestion, the possessing spirit, called “Mr. Wriggles” by Lily, manifesting in increasingly uncomfortable and inappropriate for network television ways. The execution here is largely – though not exclusively – the live footage of the television broadcast as it unfolded. As such, the results are reminiscent of classic BBC program, Ghostwatch. However, it’s a little most distancing in a couple of ways, and so not quite as successful. Ghostwatch was hosted by people recognizable as presenters from British television. I don’t recall seeing Dastmalchian in anything before, though he’s solid enough as Delroy.
There are various other elements, such as “behind the scenes” footage during the commercial breaks, which add useful background, yet break the illusion of watching live television. At the end, we seem to end up inside Delroy’s head, which is not something “hypnotic suggestion” can explain. The period setting also adds distance, and while this could technically be long-lost footage, it’s hard to swallow as such. On the other hand, the late seventies are a good era in which to set this, and the film opens with a montage of genuine footage of turmoil from the era. Watching this a couple of days after the election, it came as an interesting and timely reminder that upheaval and change, of one kind or another, has almost been the default setting for the United States over the last hundred years.
Qualms about believability aside, and taken as purely fictional horror, this works very well. Everyone suits their roles beautifully, and if the setting isn’t entirely credible, the characters are. They initially all seem assured of their respective positions: Haig the sceptic, Ross-Mitchell the believer, and Delroy the neutral, who doesn’t care as long as people watch. After the atmosphere building of the first half, this trio – along with Lily the malicious instigator – who power things through a deliberately disorienting experience for the audience, who are explicitly told not to believe the evidence of their own eyes. There are moments here when, undeniably, it works: you may never look at earthworms the same way again. Yet it’s an experience easy to discard after the final credits roll.