Halloween horror meets retro Northern Irish TV in new movie ghost story Haunted Ulster Live
What's more frightening – manifestations of monstrous spectral evil, or the amount of beige in 1990s Northern Irish telly?
That's the question a new horror movie hopes to answer, as Haunted Ulster Live takes audiences back to the past for spooky scares and a dose of the province's inimitable dark humour.
Released to streaming services just in time for Halloween, the ghostly shocker is centred around a live broadcast from a supposedly haunted Belfast house in 1998 – a light-hearted show that goes terribly wrong when its kitschy hosts are confronted by unnameable terrors, with only their microphones and plastered-on fake smiles to protect them.
Filmed in Northern Ireland by a local cast and crew, the movie goes out of its way to lovingly recreate the era, from trick-or-treaters dressed as Power Rangers, to vintage VHS players inside its terraced house of horror, to the look of the TV presenters.
The movie even includes a mocked-up Confidential Telephone-style advert, a familiar sight to people just six months after the Good Friday Agreement.
For writer and director Dominic O'Neill, turning back the clock isn't just a quirky selling point for the movie, but a way to explore changes in both the media and Northern Irish society itself.
“It’s 1998, it’s on the cusp of a lot of changes,” he says.
“You've got the Good Friday Agreement, arguably the end of the Troubles, and the millennium’s just around the corner.
“In terms of entertainment, the old broadcast style is nearing its end as cable and digital are coming in; TV is about to move from being in 4:3 to widescreen; the internet's becoming commonplace, though it’s not yet broadband.
“Our characters reflect that too; the hosts are a jaded, slightly past-it old pro and an eager up-and-coming children’s presenter, we use them to show the past and the future of TV.”
To capture the look of Belfast 1998, O'Neill embarked on intense research in Northern Ireland Screen's archives.
“There was a lot of time spent watching things like Anderson On The Box and the Kelly show, which we fed into our production bible,” he reveals.
“My main discovery? A lot of beige – it was everywhere; the sets, the clothes, everything. We repainted the interior of the house we were filming in to bring that in, and outfitted our older host in a tan jacket.”
The 44-year-old director adds that these days, the forced jollity of shows made at a time of enormous political strife makes them a peculiar watch.
“You know that just streets away from the studio unconscionable violence is happening, and the fact they're deliberately avoiding it makes them all the more uncanny,” he says.
“The Troubles haunt TV light entertainment of the 1990s.”
One very clear period influence on the movie is the late Gerry Anderson, whose inimitable style forms the basis of older presenter Gerry Burns.
“We’re not just doing an impression,” says O'Neill, “but yes, his sardonic wit combined with total professionalism was in the mix.
“The idea hit me; what would it be like to put Gerry Anderson in with a poltergeist? I couldn't resist.
“The funny thing is, I found he actually had done a ghost-hunting show – one for radio, looking for spectres in Crumlin Road Gaol. He really did do it all.”