If I say that there are five films in a horror saga called Blackwell Ghost, many will be shocked. Even moviegoers of those who know practically everything that has been filmed and yet to be filmed may be unaware of this saga. Today, we are going to vindicate a series of films of, rather than B series, amateur style and a budget close to zero, which are what Paranormal Activity should have been and was not. Although the first installment was distributed in 2017, there have already been five installments, and seen how the last of them ends, it is expected minimum one more.
Turner Clay’s first delivery – Fact or fiction?
Turner Clay is the real protagonist of the whole saga. He is the director and started in filmmaking with poverty-budgeted genre film projects, State of Emergency (2010). But it was the first Blackwell Ghost film, which was made in 2017, that has put the director on the radar.
The film begins with a meta-cinematic proposal. Turner Clay presents himself as a genre filmmaker, and introduces us to his next project, a documentary about ghosts. For any astute viewer, it is clear that this is fiction and is a metacinematographic tool more (although on the Internet you can always find nerds who ask about the veracity of the saga), but the truth is that Clay adorns the work of a patina of verismo (at least in this first installment) that if it gives much “realism” (meaning that has to be taken with tweezers, when we talk about paranormal themes).
One man, one dream
Blackwell Ghost 1 delves into Clay’s life and the making of his “documentary”. A stroke of luck comes knocking on his door when a fellow countryman of his invites him to his home to document the ghosts he believes inhabit his house. The saga opts for Found Footage, or rather a variation of it, because the footage we see is the one theoretically prepared and cooked in the editing room by the filmmaker himself.
But what is really interesting is found in the cooking of Blackwell Ghost 1. The viewer should be warned beforehand not to expect strong emotions. Not at all. In fact, the entire discourse of the film is made precisely in opposition to the scheme of this type of cinema, pointing clearly to the Paranormal Activity saga, with which it shares similarities but with which it rivals for its vision of the paranormal. The film presents what could be “a haunting” if it were real. That is, bumps, noises, and in some extreme cases, movements of objects. Blackwell Ghost 1 knows how to capture the viewer’s interest by presenting the elements in a progressive way and always playing between the boundaries of the “real” and the “supernatural”. Obviously we know that everything is fiction, but the pact of fictionality can become very strong in certain moments of Blackwell Ghost 1.
On the other hand, Blackwell Ghost 1 will set a model that all other installments will follow. Even in its short duration, because all the films are barely over an hour long. The only thing that the following installments will add will be certain details, which are still very enjoyable. For me, the zenith is reached in the fourth film, which is the culmination of Blackwell Ghost’s proposal.
A second delivery
From this film, Clay Turner would direct four more. Only Blackwell Ghost 2 is related to the case of the first house (the ghost of Blackwell, mentioned in the title of the film), and it is really the worst film of the saga, because it does not add much to the first installment and the structure it uses is really strange, cutting off the climax of the plot (obviously, except for this film, all the others follow a final climax that means the most “palpable” appearance of a ghostly apparition). The viewer can do without it and go directly to the third installment.
The house of 1000 corpses
The third and fourth films change location and no longer tell us the story of the ghost of Blackwell, but present us with a new story, but following the same scheme. Once again our protagonist receives information from a house where strange apparitions happen, and where a serial killer lived. These two follow the same model of the first one, but adding certain details (related to new techniques that help the protagonist to find ghosts, as well as part of the lore of the protagonist) that underpin the saga.
Formula depletion
The fifth installment is also set in the same space as the third and fourth, but it seems that the formula has already been squeezed to the maximum, and does not have the same freshness as the preceding films. Still, seeing as it can change locations at any time, there’s always hope to continue seeing worthwhile installments.
Turner Clay, master of ceremonies
One of the keys to success seems to be the charisma of the protagonist himself, who manages to create quite a strong bond with the viewer. In a very intelligent way the script of the various installments is able to elaborate details related to his personal life, as well as the involvement of the protagonist with the film project, which serves to make us empathize with him.
