Eponastill
Justified & Ancient
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2002
- Messages
- 1,122
- Location
- generally on the fringes
I guess you lot didn't like it
I saw the first episode last night (encouraged by the review in the FT this month). Yes it was full of cliche... not much room for anything else actually.
Buuutt it reminded me of my favourite slightly-shite paranormal programme of yore, Ghost Hunters. What with the dramatised bits but also including the real people who were there. And you know it's all dramatised up for jump scares. But like Ghost Hunters I kind of liked that you could read between the lines and wonder what was really going on between the people involved. What with the local vicar believing in evil prechristian spirits and book-burning (he might not have been the most level-headed chap to get in), and the rather batty-looking mother (having said that I would have gone a bit batty had there been a 7-foot bird-headed figure in the kitchen) and the father losing the plot with his increasingly dark paintings (rather Shining-like). You can't help wondering where stress and mental illness figure in the plot.
But surely you liked the mad blue lights in the goat barn? And the spinny electricity meter racking up massive bills? And the strange old woman in the play room that the children didn't think to mention? And the bird-headed figure? And the friendly elephant-shaped shadow (those ancient Welsh spirits know all about elephants these days). Come on. You must have liked those.
Even if there was the completely inexplicable appearance of a mad-haired vicar who had nothing to do with it but was hired to spout scaremongering stuff about ancient welsh evil entities and how you shouldn't read occult books. And the fact that two main characters in the story weren't even alive any more to put in their twopennorth. And the disgusting owl goo on the windscreen. And the complete lack of any analysis or levelheadedness to balance the whole thing.
I quite liked it. In parts. I'd watch another one?
(Also I see from Blessmycottonsocks's link to the BBC that the late great? Eddie Burks was involved. They should have included a star turn from him. He was always my favourite on Ghost Hunters. Although really I'm not sure that you can have chats with the dead. But I liked his apparent utter sincerity.)
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Ok I just watched the second one and that was pretty bad. The pink-haired mother isn't the sharpest tool in the box is she. She can't imagine a life without a family so she has seven children, and she can't actually spell their names right (Meemi, Sigourni), and she has so little else to think about and so little experience of school and how rational people think that she dreams up this whole bonkers philosophy to live her life around, where everything remotely weird can be pinned on her dead father-in-law wanting (inexplicably) to steal her children and wind her up. Meanwhile her long suffering shift working husband has never properly dealt with his father's death which happened when he was just a kid, and is too wimpy to tell her to shut up. She loves the limelight and gets a tv programme made about her. One of the daughters has rationalised things to make it nice that her grandad is still around. But this hasn't rubbed off.
Imagine living your life like that so you think some dead relative is watching you 24 hours a day, watching you on the loo and picking your nose. And then switching channels on the tv and messing with your cupboards. It'd get tedious.
Am I horrible and bitchy? Probably. It's not that I dont' believe in weird shit, obviously. But I don't believe in personal ghosts harrassing people for 20 years like something out of a horror film. Get a grip.
Ok, you're right. It's an awful programme isn't it.
I saw the first episode last night (encouraged by the review in the FT this month). Yes it was full of cliche... not much room for anything else actually.
Buuutt it reminded me of my favourite slightly-shite paranormal programme of yore, Ghost Hunters. What with the dramatised bits but also including the real people who were there. And you know it's all dramatised up for jump scares. But like Ghost Hunters I kind of liked that you could read between the lines and wonder what was really going on between the people involved. What with the local vicar believing in evil prechristian spirits and book-burning (he might not have been the most level-headed chap to get in), and the rather batty-looking mother (having said that I would have gone a bit batty had there been a 7-foot bird-headed figure in the kitchen) and the father losing the plot with his increasingly dark paintings (rather Shining-like). You can't help wondering where stress and mental illness figure in the plot.
But surely you liked the mad blue lights in the goat barn? And the spinny electricity meter racking up massive bills? And the strange old woman in the play room that the children didn't think to mention? And the bird-headed figure? And the friendly elephant-shaped shadow (those ancient Welsh spirits know all about elephants these days). Come on. You must have liked those.
Even if there was the completely inexplicable appearance of a mad-haired vicar who had nothing to do with it but was hired to spout scaremongering stuff about ancient welsh evil entities and how you shouldn't read occult books. And the fact that two main characters in the story weren't even alive any more to put in their twopennorth. And the disgusting owl goo on the windscreen. And the complete lack of any analysis or levelheadedness to balance the whole thing.
I quite liked it. In parts. I'd watch another one?
(Also I see from Blessmycottonsocks's link to the BBC that the late great? Eddie Burks was involved. They should have included a star turn from him. He was always my favourite on Ghost Hunters. Although really I'm not sure that you can have chats with the dead. But I liked his apparent utter sincerity.)
----
Ok I just watched the second one and that was pretty bad. The pink-haired mother isn't the sharpest tool in the box is she. She can't imagine a life without a family so she has seven children, and she can't actually spell their names right (Meemi, Sigourni), and she has so little else to think about and so little experience of school and how rational people think that she dreams up this whole bonkers philosophy to live her life around, where everything remotely weird can be pinned on her dead father-in-law wanting (inexplicably) to steal her children and wind her up. Meanwhile her long suffering shift working husband has never properly dealt with his father's death which happened when he was just a kid, and is too wimpy to tell her to shut up. She loves the limelight and gets a tv programme made about her. One of the daughters has rationalised things to make it nice that her grandad is still around. But this hasn't rubbed off.
Imagine living your life like that so you think some dead relative is watching you 24 hours a day, watching you on the loo and picking your nose. And then switching channels on the tv and messing with your cupboards. It'd get tedious.
Am I horrible and bitchy? Probably. It's not that I dont' believe in weird shit, obviously. But I don't believe in personal ghosts harrassing people for 20 years like something out of a horror film. Get a grip.
Ok, you're right. It's an awful programme isn't it.
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