The Scare Salon

I had been curious about seeing 2013’s WNUF Halloween Special for ages, especially after it kept turning up on “best Halloween movie” lists around the internet. Since it’s almost Halloween, and since Shudder recently added it to their platform, I figured now was as good a time as any.

WNUF is one of those movies whose origins pretty much cemented its cult status and street cred in the horror community. Filmed on vintage equipment in an old rectory and partially comprised of bits of found media from the 1980s as well as retro-aesthetic commercials and network bumpers, the movie was shot to as closely resemble a TV broadcast from 1987 as possible, even down to filmmaker Chris LaMartina rerecording the finished film on VHS multiple times to give it the appearance of a degraded bootleg tape from the era. Not only that, but in a brilliant bit of marketing and in place of traditional indie distribution, the crew left VHS copies of the movie in bathrooms and on empty tables at various VHS and horror conventions without any explanation, to give it that true “found footage” vibe.

To further the air of verisimilitude, WNUF Halloween Special has no credits at all, playing out exactly as if it was an old tape of a TV show that someone recorded in the late 80s. This conceit is delightful from a “total immersion” point of view, but maybe slightly less so from a “creepy Halloween movie” angle. To be fair, the movie is usually billed as a comedy or a parody rather than a straight horror film, so don’t expect any big scares; it’s not nearly as spooky as 1992’s Ghostwatch, in other words, but it’s along those same lines, with an added Satanic Panic element to boot. It’s a pretty enjoyable watch overall, and would likely be a fun movie to have playing in the background during a Halloween party.

The core story of WNUF, much like Ghostwatch (or 2024’s outstanding Late Night with the Devil), centers around a local network’s Halloween special, a live broadcast of a field reporter named Frank Stewart (Paul Fahrenkopf) going to investigate a haunted house. Said haunted house has been abandoned for many years after a young man named Donald Webber murdered his parents, later claiming that demons communicated with him through a Ouija board and told him to do it. Since that time, unsurprisingly, the Webber House is rumored to be haunted.

Before we get to any of that, though, there is a significant amount of time spent on a local newscast featuring anchors named Deborah Merritt and Gavin Gordon (played by Leanna Chamish and Richard Cutting, respectively), who are dressed in cheesy Halloween costumes (a witch and a vampire) and make endless lame Halloween puns, exactly as news anchors would have done in the 80s. They cover a couple of different stories, like a political rivalry between two candidates for governor, a small but vocal Christian group protesting Halloween (there’s that Satanic Panic thing), and a local dentist named Dr. Stanley Allen (Bob Creager) doing a “Cash for Candy” trade-in program for the holiday.

Every few minutes, just as in a real television broadcast, there are commercials for various things, like a new brand of tampons, a carpet warehouse, and a monster truck rally, plus a few anti-drug PSAs and ads for upcoming episodes of ridiculous (but still believable by 80s standards) TV programs and made-for-TV movies.

If you grew up in the 70s, 80s, or early 90s, you will likely find all of this hilariously spot-on, as the filmmakers captured the look and feel of this kind of thing pretty much perfectly. It might not tickle the same nostalgia bone in younger viewers, and thus might not be as effective for them, since WNUF is less like a standard “movie” and more like a found footage experiment in retro realism. Your mileage, though, may vary depending on how into vintage media you are and how much you admire the filmmakers’ all-in commitment to the bit.

Anyway, after the news broadcast is over (and the anchors have frequently hyped up the live haunted house investigation to come), we finally get to the “special” proper. As previously mentioned, we’re now following reporter Frank Stewart onsite at the Webber House. In between more commercials and occasional check-ins from his producer Veronica Stanze (Nicolette le Faye), he interviews several people in costumes who have gathered outside the house for the festivities. From the jump, we can tell that Frank is a skeptic and something of a hardened newsman who thinks this whole special is a farce but is game to go along for the sake of his job.

At one point, one of the Christian protesters yells something to try to interrupt the broadcast, but Frank shuts it down, and the person is escorted away off-screen.

After airing a canned documentary clip about the Webber murders to give viewers some context, Frank introduces his sidekicks for the evening, paranormal investigators Dr. Louis Berger and his wife Claire Berger (played by Brian St. August and Helenmary Ball, respectively), as well as their psychic cat, Shadow. The Bergers are very obviously based on Ed and Lorraine Warren, which amused me no end.

Frank interviews the pair for a while outside the house as the costumed people in the background look on, but at long last, it’s time to go inside for the investigation, which will also feature a “call-in séance” that people at home can participate in. But first, another commercial break!

Yeah, as realistic as this is, I will admit that it sometimes got a tad repetitive and aggravating having the special go to commercial every few minutes; some of the commercials were even repeated more than once, just like on real TV, though in most cases, if a commercial had already been shown once or a news story was getting too boring, the unseen “viewer” watching the tape would fast forward through it, so there was that. You can totally see why the makers of Late Night with the Devil chose to use the “commercial breaks” to show what was going on backstage, though.

Frank and the Bergers go inside the house and are soon joined by a priest named Father Joseph Matheson (Robert Long II), who seems a bit freaked out and inexperienced (which we later find out is because he’s actually not a priest, but an actor hired by the network). Not long after going inside, Claire Berger states that something very dangerous is in the house, and moments later, their kitty apparently gets a psychic compulsion to run upstairs. The Bergers follow while Frank interviews the priest, asking him if he’d be willing to do an exorcism if it becomes necessary.

They do eventually have the séance as well, but just as it likely would be in real life, it’s almost exclusively comprised of prank callers.

From this point forward, things go about how you’d expect: everyone hears weird noises, the cat goes missing (and doesn’t make it, sad to say), the Bergers’ equipment is mysteriously wrecked, and so forth. As shit starts to hit the fan, the network starts cutting abruptly to commercials or to news clips from earlier, but bits and pieces of the live broadcast going south are sprinkled in here and there, giving an indication of what might have happened.

At the end of the “movie,” a later news broadcast is shown, where the anchors from earlier report that Frank and the Bergers haven’t been seen since Halloween night and no one knows what happened to them. They then carry on to the next story with their fake smiles, as if nothing was wrong.

As a piece of immersive art and an exercise in precise VHS-era replication, WNUF Halloween Special is a triumph, and will definitely appeal to people of a certain age (ahem) who will immediately recognize all the tropes and visuals being lovingly parodied here. As a movie, I feel it’s a bit less successful, as its frequent commercial interruptions undercut any sense of tension or narrative, making the whole “special” seem a bit disjointed. I also felt it took far too long to get into the house in the first place, so the final act of enduring the “haunting” seemed to be over too quickly and not worth all the lead-up.

That said, I suspect that Chris LaMartina was less concerned with making an actually scary found footage movie and more with trying to make the thing as period-accurate as possible; how you feel about this will determine how much you’ll enjoy the experience. Personally, I had fun with it, but felt it would have benefitted from starting the “live special” portion much earlier, going lighter on the commercials, and maybe even having more of the commercials specifically centering on Halloween, just to give the film a more cohesive holiday vibe. I admire the hell out of everyone involved in this project, though, for how eerily authentic they managed to make it and how meticulously all the details were considered. It’s a fantastic achievement in found footage, and even though it’s not scary or Halloweeny enough for my tastes, it’s definitely a seasonal cult classic for a reason.

By the way, there is also a sequel (of sorts) called Out There Halloween Mega Tape that came out in 2022 and is set up like a talk show from the 1990s. I haven’t seen it yet, but I reckon I’ll get around it eventually.

Until next time, keep it creepy, my friends.