The controversial demonologists Ed and Lorraine Warren insisted that it takes “only 28 days” to break the veil of the “spiritual world”. The statement was born, of course, from his long and extensive experience in similar situations. But, as if that were not enough, they insisted on the possibility that phenomena of an inexplicable nature were subject to a verifiable internal order. This whole strange idea supports a series of documents 28 paranormal days Joe Berlinger for Netflix.
What could have been a journey through the strange, unusual, and frightening ends up being a great joke of unwitting black humor. Step by step, Berlinger reconstructs alleged experiences on the verge of perceiving reality and tries to find a coherent explanation for them.
MASS MEDIA? Technology and a set of supposed measurable data that becomes an unequal mix between visual chronicle and morbid spectacle. Also, as if it were an artificial addition, the experience accompanies the son-in-law of the cult exploratory pair of supernatural phenomena.
What is the supernatural? The question is repeated more often than is convenient in 28 paranormal days. Eight participants in the process will try to answer it, but from “day 1”, which is indicated in the first chapter, it is obvious that they will not succeed. This attempt reality show immediately disintegrates amidst a sea of increasingly tiresome inconsistencies.
Moreover, everything that it includes – from the concept of the unknown to fear turned into an object of study – is very ambitious. But 28 paranormal days, with six short episodes, barely scratches the surface of the idea. Much less, he manages to analyze it outside of a cheap show, poorly constructed and, in most cases, almost self-parody.
Between fear and humor 28 paranormal days
Belinger, responsible for several documentaries, including the popular – and superficial – part talking to killers, has experience in fictionizing reality. In fact, some of his best techniques, such as the subjective camera and dramatized scenes, try to bring some order to the picture. 28 paranormal days.
But despite its intentions, the series doesn’t go beyond exploring the possibility that horror could be an experience. halfway between what sounds like cruel humor about human gullibility and something more complicated about being scary, 28 paranormal days he decays due to his clumsiness.
Belinger, who wants to show that some places can be evil, strange and inexplicable, transfers experience into the realm of scientific hypothesis. Which makes you use little effects tricks to create an atmosphere that is, to put it mildly, uncomfortable.
All the clichés of the spirit world
Like a low quality version of the series Ghostbustersresearcher Grant Wilson, 28 paranormal days try to decipher the world of the invisible. He does this with an obvious naturist production in which he mixes clue searching with a certain set design of darkness. However, his attempts are so obvious that they are a jumble of commonalities with other productions dealing with similar themes.
Darkness of closed windows or destroyed areas with amplified sounds. The constant persistence of the participants “in the perception that something is happening” and even the usual tricks of recording darkness with sensitive spectral cameras. All the clichés of curiosity about the paranormal are included in 28 paranormal days. So the question inevitably arises as to whether Belinger is asking anything else about gullibility and the collective ability to fear.
The mere assumption of a social experiment is much more interesting than the series itself.. Perhaps that is why there is something cynical about traveling through dusty rooms, narrow corridors clogged with garbage, and lonely places. Belinger, accustomed to exposing human nature in all its miseries, plays an almost grotesque game about what frightens us.
28 paranormal daysnothing new to show
But without the right tools that hint at the bottom 28 paranormal days collapses in the middle of a boring production. In its final chapters, the series mixes the urgency of leaving a message – even a vague and formless one – with ending the experience with some dignity.
This does not work, and this feeling of incompleteness and elementary nature of the work is the poorest element in creativity. 28 paranormal days. A failed experiment that could at least be a different take on the fear of being performed with great skill.
