I don’t scare easily and I am probably the least superstitious person I know. I do not believe in ghosts, ghoulies or things that go bump in the night (barring peckish urban foxes). I take a dim view of the chance that paranormal beings exist in our reality and of those who seek to convince me otherwise. Horoscopes are a load of old orbs as far as I am concerned.
That said, I love horror films and am a Movie Director’s dream when it comes to being made to jump. Even if I can anticipate when the shock moments are due to occur, I still suffer that electro-shock, jerk-in-your-seat moment when the time comes to flash a glimpse of the monster’s terrible visage, spiking adrenaline into my veins and stirring a cold fear into my heart.
From the same people who brought us THE ZOMBIE DIARIES and THE ZOMBIE DIARIES 2, Directors Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates have crafted a not-entirely-hopeless little spookfest in THE PARANORMAL DIARIES: CLOPHILL. It succeeded in making me jump at least twice.
Comparison with The Blair Witch Project is inevitable as much of the running-time is spent watching idiots scamper about in the darkness with only night-vision cameras and woefully inadequate torches to aid them. However, the film does not use a ‘found-footage’ approach; rather, a faux-documentary style is adopted, complete with interviews with locals who allude to strange goings-on up at the ruin of Clophill church, Bedfordshire. And black and white photos. Black and white photos are terrifying.
There is a lot of standing about in the dark. Crumbs!
The meta-filmmakers in THE PARANORMAL DIARIES are an amateur paranormal investigator husband-and-wife duo, who assemble a Scooby-gang to help them verify rumours that a Black Mass held at the ruin in 1963 has since prised open a portal to Hell, through which unspeakable horrors have poured to reign terror upon the hapless Clophill villagers. But the truth is rather more tame than that. We see footage of locals who are willing to discuss details of their experiences, all of which are singularly underwhelming. Examples include: shadows, noises, bones, graffiti, darkness at night time, feeling a bit scared.
The intrepid crew camp out over three nights to try to get a repeat of these happenings and record the evidence. They must have bought a copy of Paranormal Investigations for Dummies on the journey, as a number of related but laughable technologies are deployed in their hunt for ghostly apparitions. A Ouija board appears, spelling out a word which makes no sense in English but conveniently does so when translated to Latin. Voices are heard over a crackling radio, seeming to form a disconcerting connection between the ghostly voice and the filmmaking couple’s small daughter who they think may be haunted. A PKE meter (Egon Spengler eat your heart out) goes wild, flashing from green to, er, red. A local Bouncer who joins the crew in their non-quest gets the willies.
It is true that for most of the film, absolutely nothing of any interest whatsoever occurs. We learn that at the time of the reports of a Black Mass up at the church, the local vicar went a bit unusual and became fond of a drink or ten. Names on gravestones pose an indecipherable but entirely uninteresting mystery. There is a lot of standing about in the dark. Crumbs!
Things pick up a little in the final twenty minutes or so and we get some scares; flashes of joke shop masks in the hedge, anonymous clumping footsteps, a faint ringing noise in the ears, animalistic coughing (could be a badger – not sure). Finally relief, as some blokes in Jedi outfits turn up with their girlfriends and do a little late night body painting. Of course, the Police can find no trace of any of this when alerted to the problem. They may be complicit in a sinister conspiracy. Or, more likely, they just don’t give a damn, given there is no evidence that any crime has been committed. Everyone go home, there’s nothing to see here.