Personally I am on the fence about ghosts, I don’t know whether to believe in them or not. So to watch this show, which was very well done but also came across as very over-the-top was quite hard because you wanted to see concrete evidence that ghosts are real and that’s scary, but actually it all came across quite gimmicky and you do wonder: did Netflix have a hand in amping up the fear.

28 Days Haunted follows three separate groups of Paranormal Investigators as they go to some of the most haunted places in America to try and free the ghosts that are trapped there, which includes a family that were murdered by their father after he got his eldest daughter pregnant. The fascinating part of the show for me was finding out what crimes have been committed at these haunted places and what that would mean for a spirit trying to pass over into the light. And maybe this is commonplace, but all of these Paranormal Investigators were rooted in Christianity and heaven and hell and so you have to wonder: if you were an atheist or a different religion, could you believe in ghosts or would that not be possible?

Over the month things of course begin to heat up with the ghosts including them seemingly possessing one of the investigators and giving him signs of a heart attack, in which he ends up at the ER. This is very interesting but also to see him immediately then drink full sugar Coke and eat mozzarella sticks begs to differ whether it was an entity or just his own bad arteries. As well as this, things are being thrown across the room, vases are being smashed, and there’s general tomfoolery by these ghosts.

The issue I have with this show is if nothing happened would they have still shown it? Probably not. So how much of the tomfoolery done by the ghosts was actually ghosts and not producers in the back slamming doors and walking across creaking staircases and pushing things over? At no point really do we see the angles from where the noises are coming from, we only see the investigators’ reaction to it, so how do we know that is not someone just wandering about? How do we know that it’s not something on wires being thrown across the room? It really makes it hard to believe it when you’re not actually there yourself to see it.

It’s a very interesting show and I did enjoy it a lot. At the end they did sour it a bit when one of the investigators, after they say that the evil is finally gone, looks at the camera menacingly as if he’s still possessed. But apart from that and the over-dramatisation of it being American, it was quite fun and did spark my interest in going for a ghost walk or visiting haunted places to see whether anything actually happens.

It’s a very easy show to watch, it is a bit scary at times because things do get thrown about so there are some jump scares, but it’s not the most riveting. I did enjoy it up until the end when we already knew about all the crimes, but if you’re looking for something easy to watch that will give you a bit of a scare but not too much over the autumn/winter months then I definitely recommend this, because it does have some charm and some intrigue, it’s just very hard to prove that it’s all real.

What do you think of 28 Days Haunted?

Until next time.

Published by shonaharding

Media graduate with a passion for reviewing film and TV. View all posts by shonaharding