Supernatural Station

Ghostfacers

Supernatural Season 3, episode #13.
Airdate: Thursday April 24, 2008.
Written by Ben Edlund.
Directed By Phil Sgriccia.

In deference to my overseas visitors wish not to be spoiled, episode review posts and images are no longer being displayed in the blog index. Please click on the post link or go to the “Reviews” category to read a review.

• Synopsis: Click here to read the episode summary.

  This episode opens with the return of the season one duo, Harry Spengler and Ed Zeddmore, who are airing their reality show, Ghostfacers to the TV audience. On video, they introduce their cast of geeks which include, a cameraman, Spruce, Ed's adopted sister, Maggie, and the gay intern, Corbett, forming the “Ghostfacers” team, plus two grim-faced but handsome extras, Sam and Dean. The film is about the Ghostfacers' investigation of the Morton house, an abandoned house that is reputed to be haunted every leap year, on February 29th at midnight. We see the Ghostfacers set up their equipment, then get interrupted by a couple guys, Sam and Dean, who identifies themselves as police and orders the Ghostfacers off the property. But Ed recognizes them and declares that they are not cops. This leads to a heated exchange and several sections of bleeped out cursing on video.

  Then the intern, Corbett, disappears after wandering off on his own and Sam and Dean take charge of the situation. They begin a search and find clues that the previous owner, Freeman Daggett (isn't that from The X-files?), a former hospital janitor, was a disturbed and paranoid individual who took home dead bodies to play with. Two of these were now restless ghosts caught on film reenacting their demise inside the house. Then Sam also disappears and all the house exits are sealed off. Dean's frantic search reveals a hidden bomb shelter and he manages to rescue Sam in the nick of time, but too late for the intern, Corbett, who was killed by the homicidal ghost. When Corbett reappears as a ghost, Ed appeals to his lovestruck feelings and asks for his help. Corbett then attacks and destroys his own killer.

  Later, after previewing the pilot themselves, the Winchesters drive off leaving behind a self-made magnet that wipes the hard disk containing the Ghostfacers video. The end.

• Praises: I am a fan of the original Blair Witch Project, so I looked forward to seeing Supernatural's take on this pseudo-documentary, pseudo-amateur film style. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the entire episode was filmed this way. Viewers were given the impression of watching a Ghostfacers video instead of an episode of Supernatural. It is a refreshingly different style for the show and this third party viewpoint was fun to watch, though a bit dizzying a times.

  The bumbling duo from season one's Hell House were back and just as amusingly incompetent. This time they had a whole team of geeks, the “Ghostfacers”, to interfere with the Winchesters' hunt and put themselves at risk. Several scenes from first half of the show had me laughing out loud: Harry and Ed's fake slo-mo walk while cars whizzed by at normal speed in the background; Ed calling Dean “chisel chest”; and the bleeped out utterances from both parties when they encountered the Winchesters. I always suspected that Sam and Dean had filthy potty mouths and this episode finally confirmed it. There were even some notable scares. The sudden appearance of the evil ghost behind poor, doomed Corbett and again when it materialized behind Dean actually made me jump. I enjoyed watching this episode and would even download an uncensored version of it, if that were available.

• Nags: While the first half of this episode was great, the second half fizzled a bit. The emotional scenes all fell flat. I didn't feel Dean's panic when Sam disappeared nor see any love connection between Harry and Maggie or Ed and Corbett. Perhaps this a consequence of this “amateur” film style which is geared towards making things mysterious and scary, but doesn't seem to be able to convey any emotions other than fright. And what is it that Supernatural has against hospital janitors? First the yellow-eyed demon and now this homicidal ghost…is there some significance to evilness of hospital janitors that I am missing? If I were a janitor who worked at a hospital, I would be pretty pissed off at the show right now. Overall, I found this to be a great fluff episode that did a fine job of both scaring and dizzying the audience.

• My Rating: Great episode. 4 out of 5 stars.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 26th, 2008 at 9:12 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.