Episode Guide
Day One Get Out! I’m Done The Awakening Troubles Can Cause… Piercing the Veil In a month that’s given us depressing ends to She-Hulk and Rings of Power, 28 Days Haunted may actually take the cake as the funniest show this year… but for all the wrong reasons. Billing itself as a horror reality show (which should immediately get the red flags going), Netflix’s goofy ghost hunting team intend to catch ghosts on-screen – and they’re prepared to do whatever it takes to make that happen. Three separate teams head off to three different locations, each with three main players (1 “sensitive” and 2 paranormal investigators) to explore haunted locales across the US. They all follow the work of Ed and Lorraine Warren, who have been found out as frauds on more than one occasion, including the infamous Amityville Horror. Anyway, I digress. The paranormal investigators have figured out that it takes about 28 days to pierce the veil between the living and the dead, so they intend to wait it out for that length of time in these areas, believing it’ll help them communicate with the spirits beyond. All the usual hallmarks are here for ghost hunting, but immediately – nigh on the second these men and women walk through the door – the ghosts start haunting them. Flickering lights, a spooky radio, feeling like they’ve been “punched in the gut”; you name it, it’s all there on Day 1. While this could be true, one of the locations is literally a museum open to the public. Of course, this is all intentional; it gets you interested to see what’s in store for the rest of the show, and judging by the fact these guys were in the houses for 28 days, across 3 different locations, it’s telling that they only managed to get enough footage to go for six 30 minute long episodes. The editing here also leaves a lot to be desired. The show moves between areas with an annoying zoom out-zoom in function with all the different cameras, but then also uses an actual map to move across segments. On top of that, there are also talking head interviews for each of the investigators, explaining exactly what they’ve found or experienced at that given time. And honestly, it’s hilarious to watch. Whether you believe in the paranormal or not is irrelevant but this show goes above and beyond to try and push its own narrative regardless of facts. In the first episode, two of the paranormal investigators communicate with spirits, who speak through an old radio. “We need some names!” One of them bellows. The garbled reply is closer to: “#@sdjh!” and completely obscured. A small pause. “Was that Liam?” I lost it. Fits of laughter. These sort of moments are littered throughout the series, with episode 4, as another example, seeing the group over at Captain Grant’s Inn finding a star pendant buried in a grave outside… which they immediately believes is a pentagram and has a “lot of energy” attached to it. Because of course it does. But again, that’s part of the allure. This is not a good series and you absolutely should not take it seriously. But this is undoubtedly comedy gold. There are some genuine laugh out loud segments here that are far funnier than anything that came out of She-Hulk earlier this month; this is car crash TV at its absolute best and should absolutely be renewed for another 10 seasons right now. Please make it happen Netflix.
