Sunday, 3 May 2015

Review - the dead files - deranged

Psychic medium Amy Allen and her detective partner Steve Di Schiavi are back with a new episode. According to the intro, they never meet during an investigation and only compile their findings at the end of the show when they have a sit down with the owners.
Ok, so today we're at:

Falconer, New York.
Steve is heading to Sheila's house, where everyone is being terrorised by a spirit, especially her fourteen year old daughter (hands up if you're hoping for a poltergheist?!)
But now we flick over to Amy and her husband Matt as they do a walkthrough of the location. Now, one good thing and one bad thing:
+ Matt sweeps through the property and removes all personal items so that Amy doesn't pick up on who lives in the house. Good.
+ Matt follows her around with a camcorder to film all of Amy's strange expressions and impressions. Fine. But why then do we need an entire film crew to catch both of them doing what is supposed to come off as an intimate, creepy, psychic ghost tour? I can just see ten people trudging around the house with them, making noise and getting in the way. What if one of them has B.O. and another keeps farting? do we then have an evil entity in the house? Seems an odd thing to do and makes Matt being there totally redundant. Bad.

Back to Steve. Hi Sheila. We hear how her daughter Sarah is having daily experiences, getting sick and bruising up. Sheila is sick too, stabbing pains.
Amy and Matt are being recorded recording again. Amy picks up on the physical pain that people in the house are having. She doesn't know how they cope.

Apparently there's a super religious presence in the house that wants the dwellers to believe he's a ghost. I don't understand. He IS a ghost right? Anyway, he likes a particular woman in the house and smothers people by sticking his fingers in their mouth.
George now, Sheila's husband. He's chased a spirit out to the garage before and tells how he had a visit from a strange man which ended strangely and strangely enough they never saw him again. Strange.

Upstairs now and Amy is pulling faces. She cops a lot of flack for this, but really, I like it. Being an overly emotive person myself, I can put myself in her shoes and I think my eyebrows would wiggle and I would scrunch my face up too, especially if I was seeing some of the things she describes. Oop, now there's a demon in the house. Ok.

Nathan, Sheila's son tells how he used to see a set of red eyes going into the bathroom and items go inexplicably missing - only to turn up months later.


Matt quietly films (why is he here again?) As Amy pulls some crazy voices saying there's some bad stuff going on, so I have to pause for a giggle and miss what she says about some bad lady.
Michelle Henry is a local historian that Steve visits to get the background. Turns out an owner of the property in the nineteenth century was committed to an institution for 'religious excitement' and classed insane and committed suicide.

There's also been four deaths inside the house so Steve goes to visit Tina Scott, a genealogist to get the low down. Then he meets a local cop to hear how a brutal murder was committed close to the house. Sheesh, sounds like a fun place...

Amy has picked up now on the deaths and the sickness, and decides that it's not healthy for the living to be there.

Reveal time.

We go through a few characters that Amy picked up on while Steve interjects and adds his findings - putting together who is possibly who. It wouldn't be a reveal unless we make someone cry, so bingo, check that box.
The religious guy plays the centre role, so he's the one Amy has had sketched up. Family sufficiently disturbed, a couple more spirits are thrown into the mix for good measure.
We know what Steve's going to say next. No Steve, don't say it!..' And for that, I'm going to turn it over to Amy'. Ugh.

The cure
The elderly woman can't be dealt with. Really? Thanks for that.
A holy person needs to perform a sermon for the religious zealot, then a blessing.
Three sensitives are needed, two females and one male, one of them has to be a physical medium and they have to have a seance.
The daughter needs to be removed from the house until this is done.
Wow. Lots going on at this house. I'm left scratching my head though, as there is so much written history about this place that Steve presented, it just seems far too possible that Amy is given prior knowledge. I would love to believe everything I see, but this is tv, it needs to be entertaining, it needs to be neat and folded and laundered and put back on the shelf. Having said that though, for the entertainment factor, I'm glad we're back in normal homes again, is far more interesting than large tourist attraction sites and gives more of a human angle when Amy and Steve present them with the information at the end - even if that is given in a way to scare the living daylights out of them "you have a demon, and by the way, here's the pictures...also you'll need a left handed monkey trainer from Guatemala to perform a ritual to remove it...good luck!" 
we're watching you watching her and it's creepy

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