Scary Movie Month 2015 Day 29: WNUF Halloween Special

WNUF Halloween Special

I'm kind of torn about this one. Stylistically I greatly appreciate what they're doing, but narratively it's significantly less satisfying. The concept is great: what we're seeing is a VHS recording of a Halloween special aired on local TV on Halloween night 1987 in which a reporter takes a group of people into a supposedly haunted house. As would befit a VHS recording of that time, all of the commercials are in place and I could legitimately imagine someone who doesn't know this was actually shot in 2013 thinking that it was authentic. They really have the details down of that era of television, and it's as convincing a recreation as you're ever going to see.

As convincing as the production is, the novelty wears a bit thin by the halfway point. Yes, including the commercials is a very clever conceit, but the "station breaks" come so often that it begins to feel like so much padding. Also, while the commercials feel very authentic, it tends to pull the audience out of the movie when the sixth commercial for a show that never existed comes up. There was never a moment where I stopped thinking "this sure does look like the real thing" which only served to remind me that of course it wasn't the real thing. The whole special is just over 80 minutes as it is, but it might have benefited from removing three or four of those breaks and clocking in at around an hour. 

Once the proverbial excrement hits the cooling device and the allegedly haunted house turns out to be exactly that, things escalate so quickly that there's no real time for tension to build. It's a very impressive production that leaves itself almost no room to tell a story, which is disappointing. I appreciate the novelty of it and the artistry involved in recreating the look of a 1987 television broadcast so exactly, but when all is said and done it feels like no more than that: a novelty. That novelty is certainly worth a look, and the intention is worth applauding, but I wish it was a strong enough movie to be recommended as more than a curiosity.