How Real Is 'Most Haunted'?

How Real Is 'Most Haunted'?

UK Living's hugely successful paranormal investigation series 'Most Haunted' sees the launch of it's 9th season on DVD here in the UK on Monday. And after 6 year's worth of investigations, live episodes and celebrity participants we ask the question, how real is 'Most Haunted'?

Yvette Fielding and husband/co-producer Karl Beattie and the team take us to various apparently haunted locations across the UK and spend 24 hours on location to try and communicate successfully with so-called astral beings.

I've been watching this series on and off over the past years and find it extremely interesting. But, like many others, are increasingly frustrated by the lack of undeniable proof of the existence of spirits.

Most of any particular 'bumps in the night', strange noises and eyewitness accounts are more often than not laid to rest by on hand Parapsychologist and resident sceptic Ciarán O'Keeffe. As a viewer of the show I'm often amazed and slightly unnerved by some of the things I hear and witness in the 'final cut' of each episode. Then O'Keefe appears at the end and suggests a number of other more grounded reasoning behind these apparent supernatural goings-on.

Where the hell's the Controlled Testing?

Most Haunted is frustrating on so many levels, none more than the lack of attempting to control particular environments for more substantial investigations. Most of the time each team member equipped with a camera with night-vision capabilities prefers to actually sit in a darkened room and film their face and not the actual room where it seems more of the action occurs. The majority who think viewers will find the teams reactions more exciting than the actual possibility of catching a glimpse of uninterupted evidence is laughable.

Each investigation often tries slightly different attempts to communicate. Yet, however, after all these years and all these episodes there still hasn't been a single, solitary undeniable piece of evidence to convince me. Here's a few more of my gripes...

• Lock down cameras. Try wide shots of whole rooms/areas when the team are in there. This may actually capture stone throwing and the source of certain noises and light anomolies. Table movement always seems to be slightly out of shot on one end where of course a team member could be controlling the movement.


• Use digital cameras. I watched a paranormal investigation show once on late night TV and they took lots and lots of photos of each area at night. And there were some fantastic and very difficult to explain outcomes. To me a video camera is simply replicating what the eye sees. An actual digtial camera can capture split seconds that the eye can easily miss, especially in pitch dark scenarios.


• STOP FILMING YOURSELF! Why the need to film your own reactions. We've seen them a million times over. It's no good filming yourself and talking to the camera (which can STILL be done without the camera being on you) only to have a strange shadow walk past or a bang from across the room and you missing the shot. More often than not as soon as some strange occurrence happens the camera person instantly swings the camera around to try and film the source only to find out they're WAY TOO LATE. Unfortunately this just adds to the sceptisism of the whole experience.

I will continue to watch. And I wouldn't mind trying it myself. But let's hope the next season of Most Haunted will take on board some no-brainer suggestions from it's critics.

New Sexy Black Devil Doll Pics

Four brand new behind the scenes Black Devil Doll have been posted up to the official site! But be warned they aren't "work safe". Check them out below.

From the sick and twisted mind of Shawn Lewis, former editor and publisher of Blackest Heart Magazine and the creative force behind Rotten Cotton Graphics, comes the sleaziest Blaxploitation Horror film ever envisioned.

Is There Really a Problem With Horror Remakes?

Horror remakes are becoming as common as the sight of Britney Spears in the tabloids or the over-the-top hype that surrounds every goddamn reality TV show these days. Everyone slates them, most people don't want them but why do the studios keep getting them made and why do they keep making money? So it begs the real question. Is there a genuine problem with horror rehashes?

Im the past few years we've seen an incredible increase in the amount of horror movies that have been remade. We've seen remakes of existing non-english speaking international horror's such as The Ring and The Grudge. We've seen remakes hiding behind descriptions such as 're-imagining' like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And hell, we've even seen remakes of remakes!!! So clearly we're swamped, we're spoilt for choice. Is Hollywood completely out of ideas, has it dried up that quick that no-one can be bothered anymore.

It's not just horror of course, most genres in the past decade have been victim to the dreaded remake status. Yet horror seems the most popular choice. But the truth is they don't exactly get rave reviews but they make a pretty penny. So as long as money outweighs the artistic flair and creativeness of writers and filmmakers out there we're gonna be stuck with them for a very long time to come.

Everyone has their opinion when it comes to a whether or not you think a movie works, or even if it's good or not. I admit I appreciate tripe sometimes and love mindless dreg. But not always. But in all cases I would ALWAYS suggest trying the original first. It's easy to be sucked into the campaigns these days that 'big up' the latest horror fest, especially if you're young and more willing to pay your bucks to see a fresh and vividly coloured gore-fest as opposed to old grainy black and white horror flick that wouldn't these days look out of place on afternoon tv. But I would ask you to reconsider and always expericence the original, for what it is, before taking on the modern retelling.

And in case you were really interested. Here's a little shortlist of what I consider to be the best of the remakes in the past 10 years.

Dawn of the Dead (great retelling and the original is actually my fave zombie movie)
Halloween (brave and brutally shocking, extremly well executed)
House on Haunted Hill (my guilty pleasure, well hammed up by Geoffrey Rush)
The Ring (not as genuinely terrifying as the original but a damn good effort)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (gory and nasty and pretty well done really)
The Hills Have Eyes (shocking and sick - loved it!)

And here are the ones to avoid - but keep in mind, it might not all be down to it being a bad remake. But I think it would be better to check out the original first

Dark Water (absolutely terrible)
The Grudge (better than Dark Water but still disappointing)
The Omen (absolutely pointless project)
The Haunting (best bit was seeing Owen Wilson decapitated)
Psycho (ideal for modern audiences, but probably a pointless shot by shot retelling)
Black Christmas (made me almost lose faith in horror and life)
The Wicker Man (tried to forget about this. god damn you Cage!)

And finally.....
When A Stranger Calls (f'cking pointless and equally awful. nuff said)

And finally how about the remakes that scare the hell of me just thinking that people would even consider redoing...

The Evil Dead (why even try. still feel Evil Dead 2 was good enough to be a remake)
The Fly (will have to pretty special to beat Cronenbourg's 1986 effort)
Last House on the Left (gonna have to be pretty shocking)
Prom Night (going out on a limb and saying this will be hugely disappointing)
Piranha (oh go on then)
The Thing (why oh why again!!!!?)
Friday the 13th (will have to do something special!)

There you have it. Agree or disagree but unless we can get out of this creative rut in the genre we're gonna be bogged down with rehash after rehash until we don't have a creative bone or brain cell left.

More Alba in the Eye Remake

Not only has the official site fully launched, but Lionsgate has provided B-D with another still from the PG-13 Jessica Alba starrer The Eye (trailer), the remake of the popular Thai horror film (Jian Gui) hitting theaters February 1.

Sydney, a young, blind violinist is given the chance to see for the first time since childhood through a miraculous corneal transplant. As Sydney adjusts to a dizzying new world of colors and shapes, she is haunted by frightening visions of death itself capturing the doomed and dragging them away from the world of the living. Terrorized and on the brink of insanity, Sydney must discover whose eyes she has inherited, and what secret visions they have held.

Exclusive Cloverfield TV Spot!

ShockTillYouDrop.com has posted an exclusive new TV spot for Cloverfield, the J.J. Abrams-produced monster movie hitting theaters on January 18.

Directed by Matt Reeves, the film stars Michael Stahl-David, Mike Vogel, Odette Yustman, Lizzy Caplan, Jessica Lucas and T.J. Miller.

Go here to watch the TV spot!