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Channel 4's True Horror

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.)

----

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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Well I couldn't help myself so I watched the third episode. And I think if you do, you'll be pleasantly surprised. It was much more like something I'd have hoped for initially. There are some friends who go to camp in a supposedly haunted wood near a spooky church. They get bothered by something horrible in the night and freak out. All this is done quite slowly so nothing much happens before the first ad break. I don't mind slow though you might be bored. Also you might not like all the farting and swearing, they probably could have cut a bit of that out. But I suppose it was to indicate the ordinariness of the boys.

I'd like to put the noises in the wood down to foxes and other animals. But I suppose you can't really mistake opening your tent and seeing a ghostly white=eyed girl running at you. It's a debatable point obviously. But even if you thought it happened it'd make quite an impact.

So then what with this on his mind Boy A figures something horrible has come home with him and gets in the obligatory Paranormal Investigation Group. But amazingly they don't come over as a bunch of nutters only out to aggravate the situation.

So there we are, I'd recommend the third episode. Just because the least happens and the people seem least bonkers. You'll find less to get irritated about. :)
 
Because you all loved this series, the 4th episode is on tonight in an hour...
In 2004, Vanessa bought The Cage in St. Osyth in Essex – but the house had previously been a medieval prison that held witches in the 16th century. These women were brutally interrogated and their children taken away from them, before being executed.

Initially, Vanessa fell in love with the house and felt she just had to buy it. She says in the docudrama, “It was calling me. It needed me, it wanted me. I just had to be the owner.”
She would come to regret this impulse buy – for four years, Vanessa was plagued by paranormal occurrences and saw three ghosts.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/7610202/true-horror-witches-prison/
 
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Someone strongly recommended a 2016 horror film called 'The Witch' to me the other day. Has anyone here seen it?

edit: and the original Freddy glove has been found (allegedly .. another story is that the original glove is owned by Robert Englund's manager) :

 
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Someone strongly recommended a 2016 horror film called 'The Witch' to me the other day. Has anyone here seen it?

edit: and the original Freddy glove has been found:


The Witch is great!

My review:

The Witch: Intriguing film. Was this about the literal appearance of Satan and actual Witches in thrall to him? Or could it all be the result of ergot contamination of the crops causing hallucinations? I'll be mulling this over for a while to come.

A religious zealot and his family are forced to leave a New England colony in 1638 and set up a homestead on the edge of a forest. A newborn baby disappears while in the care of her adolescent sister. We "see" a witch making off with the infant and sacrificing him but the father insists a wolf was responsible.

More strange occurrences and the blame continues to attach to the the young girl. Echoes of The Crucible here in the behaviour of her two youngest siblings.

Wonderfully filmed in a bleak landscape, with attention to historical detail.The diction and grammar used is that of the 17th century and at times may be difficult to understand. 9/10.
 
The Witch is great!

My review:

The Witch: Intriguing film. Was this about the literal appearance of Satan and actual Witches in thrall to him? Or could it all be the result of ergot contamination of the crops causing hallucinations? I'll be mulling this over for a while to come.

A religious zealot and his family are forced to leave a New England colony in 1638 and set up a homestead on the edge of a forest. A newborn baby disappears while in the care of her adolescent sister. We "see" a witch making off with the infant and sacrificing him but the father insists a wolf was responsible.

More strange occurrences and the blame continues to attach to the the young girl. Echoes of The Crucible here in the behaviour of her two youngest siblings.

Wonderfully filmed in a bleak landscape, with attention to historical detail.The diction and grammar used is that of the 17th century and at times may be difficult to understand. 9/10.
Watching the trailer, it reminds me of The Village .. so I take it it's better than that film?
 
I don't mind The Village, but The Witch is a lot more strange and eerie. Plus Anya Taylor-Joy is a really striking woman, perfect for the role.
 
There is the kernel of an idea there, imagine an anthology show with perhaps three IHTM stories dramatised and directed by Andy Nyman or the LoG guys accompanied with an intro interview with the real person who experienced it.

That could be gold.
 
Because you all loved this series, the 4th episode is on tonight in an hour...

https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/7610202/true-horror-witches-prison/

"The Cage" is up for sale (again). Bargain at £240,000, could probably rent it out by the night to ghost hunters.

Located in St. Osyth in Essex, U.K., the building was recently placed on the market by owner Vanessa Mitchell; this is the third time that Mitchell has tried to sell The Cage since moving out in 2008, according to local news outlet The Clacton and Frinton Gazette. Mitchell reportedly fled the house in 2004 and moved elsewhere after seeing "mysterious blood spatters" and being "physically attacked" by malevolent ghosts — one of which was "a satanic-looking goat," Mitchell told The Gazette.

https://www.livescience.com/65694-medieval-witch-prison-house.html
 
"The Cage" is up for sale (again). Bargain at £240,000, could probably rent it out by the night to ghost hunters.

Located in St. Osyth in Essex, U.K., the building was recently placed on the market by owner Vanessa Mitchell; this is the third time that Mitchell has tried to sell The Cage since moving out in 2008, according to local news outlet The Clacton and Frinton Gazette. Mitchell reportedly fled the house in 2004 and moved elsewhere after seeing "mysterious blood spatters" and being "physically attacked" by malevolent ghosts — one of which was "a satanic-looking goat," Mitchell told The Gazette.

https://www.livescience.com/65694-medieval-witch-prison-house.html
Looks pleasant enough. Not worth the asking price, though.
 
I always look at it and think that it looks like somewhere I could settle happily.
 
What is it that makes a goat more or less satanic looking? Apart from a lighted black candle between the horns I suppose.
 
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