Celluloid Club: The Pantry Ghost Documentary (2013)

I'm almost embarrassed to review this one, but considering that's 41 minutes of my life I'll never get back, I might as well make it worth my while, right?

The premise of The Pantry Ghost Documentary is this: back in 2007, videos started showing up on YouTube that supposedly depicted one family's encounters with a "real ghost". The first few videos show their pantry door opening every night at 12:34 am, and sometimes someone or something can been seen behind the glass. After removing the pantry door, the family claims they began experiencing activity all over the house that continued to escalate until they moved out. This "documentary crew" allegedly spent years trying to track down the family and were finally granted interviews, with the end result being this "documentary".

Spoiler alert: this isn't really a documentary, if you define a documentary as a work of nonfiction intended to document some aspect of reality. Though I suppose you could make the argument that the YouTube videos exist in reality, and even if they were faked (they were), a documentary about the videos is still "a work of nonfiction intended to document some aspect of reality". But that's a really liberal use of the word "documentary" if you ask me.

I got suckered into watching this after seeing some good reviews on Amazon. To be honest, I don't know what I expected; I've never once seen a thoughtful, intelligent, or well-made documentary on the paranormal, and if The Pantry Ghost Documetary had been any of those things, I don't think it would have been hiding in the depths of the Amazon Prime Instant Video library. But what can I say, I was intrigued (and bored).

I was immediately suspicious of this documentary when I spotted a credited crew member with the last name "Croatoan", also known as the word carved into a tree on Roanoke Island at the site of the Lost Colony in 1590. I suppose it's possible that someone somewhere has the last name Croatoan, but to me it just screamed "THIS IS A FAKE NAME!" and the movie was officially on notice from there on out.

Other things that bugged me about this movie:

- The father/husband who filmed the YouTube videos calls himself "John" in this movie, but I'm 99% sure his name is actually Jeremy because while his wife and daughter are credited in the movie (as Jody Lee and Arianna Lee), "John" is not, though there is a "Jeremy L" who is credited as the writer, producer, cinematographer, etc. Additionally, the YouTube account he initially used to upload the videos is called "saremy127", which sounds to me like a variation on the name Jeremy. Finally, some creepy people on the internet have apparently figured out the house's address and obtained the deed to the house, which lists a Jeremy as the owner. This isn't definitive proof that the YouTube videos were faked, but it certainly suggests that the documentary was!

 - Speaking of Jeremy, all of his interview segments have his face and voice obscured. The stated reason is that amateur ghost hunters have broken into his house to conduct investigations, but didn't they move out of the "haunted" house? It doesn't make any sense for amateur ghost hunters to break into completely random houses with no purported history of paranormal activity just because he lives there. I call shenanigans.

- Jody, who is described as being Jeremy's ex-wife, has a series of phone calls with the "documentary crew". She initially refuses to be interviewed, stating that she wants to move on with her life, but after learning that they had spoken with Jeremy she agrees to talk to them and says that she wants to show them something. What on earth did she want to show them? She never shows them anything! Jeremy tediously narrates the videos he shot, Arianna shows a weird drawing that she made, but all Jody does is talk. This is such a small, dumb thing to get worked up about, but it bugs the hell out of me. Maybe that was just a throwaway line they wrote and forgot to follow up on?
- They allegedly meet with some kind of "expert" to determine whether or not the videos had been edited in any way, but the guy's credentials are seriously sketchy. They made vague allusions to him working for a big tech company, but never name the company or talk about his qualifications. Another small thing, but it just added to the growing list of inconsistencies in my head as I watched this movie.

- The video where Arianna is playing hide and seek is so over the top and cheesy. In the video Jeremy walks in on Arianna standing in the corner of a bedroom counting. She turns to him and tells him that she's playing hide and seek with Mabel (this is the pantry ghost's name, apparently); Jeremy suggests that she play hide and seek with him instead, so Arianna runs off to hide and Jeremy starts counting. The lights go off and he wanders downstairs looking for his daughter because he hears a noise. He doesn't find his daughter, but then a big red ball comes bouncing down the stairs, like a scene ripped straight from a horror movie. He goes back upstairs and announces that he sees Arianna hiding by the dresser, but then she pops up from beneath a blanket on the bed and says, "You found me!" First of all, why is Jeremy even filming this? It's unbelievable, awkward, and weird. Second of all, it's not my style to make fun of kids on the internet so I'm not going to dwell on this, but Arianna's lines sound completely rehearsed and unnatural. There's another segment at the very end of the movie where the "documentary crew" asks her if she imagined it, and she adamantly refuses, saying, "Why would I make this up?" It again sounds completely rehearsed and unnatural. I feel bad for this girl because it seems like her father her forced her to participate in this whole charade.

Verdict: This is really more of a mockumentary than anything else, and if you watch this movie in that spirit then it is actually pretty enjoyable. My chief complaint about this movie is it's insistence that it is proof of a "real ghost", which made the bad acting and inconsistencies all the more annoying. But if you just take this movie for what it is, there are a couple of unsettling scenes early on (before he enlists the help of his daughter and a "medium" with the videos). I have no clue how he pulled these videos off, but the first few that seem to depict a face and hands pressing against the glass of the pantry door are genuinely creepy. 2 out of 5 stars.