Bad Ben is a TV movie from 2016. It has, by now, a gazillion sequels and spinoffs with, as far as I understand it, a variation of comedic effect. The first film is also often listed as a comedy or at least a horror/comedy. I personally didn’t really find it all that comedic. But I guess that the way the lead character (the only character) Tom Riley (portrayed by the director himself – Nigel Bach) approaches the dilemma of having bought a haunted house might be viewed as comedy. I, myself, don’t really see the comedic side. I barely observe that he’s not as typically scared or as hysterical as the convention suggests a haunted house owner should be.
Pragmatic Touch
He approaches it with a more pragmatic touch and is more interested in making money out of the property he bought from a sheriff’s sale. He wants to get rid of the ghost, or spirit , or whatever it is and tells the entity time and time again that he’s not afraid and won’t be intimidated by it.
The whole production is cheap, very cheap, but I think that Nigel Bach did very much with it. It might not have had a budget of more than a couple of hundred bucks but it’s cleverly made and the use of just a cell phone camera and surveillance cameras around the house is kind of a stroke of genius. We get to see everything with a cold voyeuristic feeling and I must admit it’s quite funny to see how he struggles to get it to work properly. So I guess you could call that comedic after all.
As the story goes we get more and more glimpses of what’s really going on, what has happened in the house before and what’s really possessing it. Everything is invisible though, the clever use of open and closing doors and other practical effects might look cheap because they are, but they’re highly effective to bring life into the story.
Things escalate
Of course, like in every other haunted house story, things escalate along the way. What at first were just hints and insinuation becomes violent and dangerous, yet we’re kept in the dark about many details along the way. You could say that Nigel has taken all the key elements of a haunted house flick and pushed them all together, there’s not necessarily an explanation for all of it in the storyline. But I don’t really care, I was impressed by the movie and it really sucked me in with its presence.
There’s a bit of a contradictory twist though. At the beginning it’s stated that this is a real unedited film, but Nigel hasn’t gotten all in into the illusion with the found footage concept (like Blair Witch Project) and at the end , the studios where the thing was shot are mentioned. A minor detail of course, but still noticeable if you’re nitpicking.
