The WNUF Halloween Special is a copy of a copy of a VHS recording of a live news broadcast that took place on October 31, 1987. For those of you unfamiliar with the incident, during a live broadcast, news personality Frank Stewart along with acclaimed psychics Louis and Claire Berger and a Catholic priest (Father Joseph Matheson) were broadcasting live from the supposedly haunted Webber House (the site of a double murder) when they experienced paranormal activity. The live broadcast went dead, and none of the four were ever seen again.

The rest of this review is chock full of spoiler. If you plan on watching this movie, don’t read past the picture below. If you’re okay with spoilers, continue… if you dare.

If you’re wondering why you’ve never heard of the Webber murders, Frank Stewart, or WNUF for that matter, is because they’re not real. This film goes to great lengths to appear to be a VHS recording from the 1980s, but it was actually created and released in 2013. The filmmakers went as far as to record dozens of 80s-esque commercials which are sprinkled throughout the recording, and made multiple VHS copies of the movie to give it the look of a second-(or third or fourth)-hand tape that’s been copied and passed around among friends.

The film begins with a live news broadcast from October 31, 1987. After a few news stories presented by a couple of stereotypical broadcasters from the 80s, we get to Frank Stewart, who is doing a live remote broadcast from the Webber House. In the 1960s, Donald Webber, guided by a Ouija board, murdered his parents in the house and drug their decapitated bodies down into the basement. After the trial, the house was boarded up remained abandoned for 20 years. Twenty years later on Halloween night, the house is being unsealed (a’la “Geraldo and Al Capone’s Vault”) during a live broadcast. Joining Stewart during his broadcast are husband and wife psychics Louis and Claire Berger, their cat, and Catholic priest Father Joseph Matheson.

It’s pretty clear up front that Frank doesn’t believe the house is haunted, the psychics do, and the priest doesn’t know quite what to think. The psychics brought along their third partner, Shadow, a cat that is also psychic. Shadow quickly runs off which causes the four humans to go searching for him. They do eventually find Shadow — er, parts of Shadow, anyhow — which is one of our first signs that something is going on in the Webber house. During their search for the cat, the psychics’ EVM recording equipment is also smashed off screen.

Each of these segments are interrupted by commercials, which were created explicitly for this movie. As someone who grew up in the 80s I can tell you most of them are spot on. Some of them, like the ones for a local monster truck rally and the anti-drug ads (sponsored by “Parents Against Partying”) are spot on. The biggest giveaway that none of them are real is that none of them are for shows or products or businesses that you’ve ever heard of. Obviously the point is to add to the authenticity of the recording, and they certainly do that.

Anyone who has ever sat through an episode of Scooby-Doo should be able to predict the ending. While I won’t give everything away, the last five minutes contain more f-bombs than I was expecting. As viewers, we ultimately get to see footage that did not make it to the live broadcast, which makes one wonder just whose tape we are watching…

Part The Last Broadcast/Blair Witch, part retro-80s fun, the WNUF Halloween Special is better in theory than it is in production, but if you’re in to low budget thrillers and the 1980s, give it a watch. Expect it to become a Halloween cult classic in years to come.

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