Now available on Shudder is the made for TV movie Ghostwatch. The movie originally aired in 1992 on the BBC, and caused quite a bit of controversy. The film is presented as a "live" TV special and despite opening credits stating it was fictional, many people thought it was real. One suicide and two cases of PTSD were linked to the show.
The film centers around an investigation of a haunting in a London house occupied by a single mother and her two children. If this sounds familiar it's because it is based on the true story of the Enfield haunting, The Enfield haunting was also the inspiration for The Conjuring 2.
Watching Ghostwatch I couldn't help but notice how much other found footage movies have been influenced by it. All the tropes that are common today in found footage films are in Ghostwatch. One of the most noticeable is the explaining of how all the equipment works. This is forgivable in 1992 because no one had seen this done a hundred times.
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| Paranormal Activity anyone? |
Ghostwatch was definitely a film ahead of it's time. When it aired nothing like it had been seen before. It unknowingly set the standard that found footage movies have been following ever since.
