I’ve been making a list of things to review for my second blog post and I came across I’ll Haunt You When I’m Dead’s pilot episode tonight.  It seemed like great timing; rainy weather and having some time alone, so I figured I’d give it a shot.  The name drew me in as well; it has the twice creepy effect of pairing the words “haunt” and “dead” and when the spooky intro music began I was eager to see what the show had to offer.

​

       The episode began with Charles, a young man whose girlfriend Kat, was being possessed by an evil entity.   After dealing with her violent outbursts for too long, he finally calls in “word of mouth” exorcist Liza Haley.  1. Why wouldn’t you contact help right away? 2. How didn’t their roommates notice anything amiss?  3. Who just happens to find an exorcist that way?

​

       By now the horribly acted dramatizations and unbelievable interviews were in full swing.  And I don’t mean unbelievable in the sense that I don’t believe in the paranormal. Unbelievable in the sense that neither Charles nor Kat seemed genuinely involved in their own story and the actors portraying them didn’t seem the least bit frightened or concerned.  Only Liza seemed sincere, yet the actress portraying her seemed bored and unsympathetic enough to the point where it started to irritate me.

​

       At this point in the episode Liza exorcised the home, but not Kat herself.  Unfortunately, Liza failed to protect herself and the evil spirit followed her home where it harassed Liza and her husband.  Liza was upset by this and I had to laugh at the irony of the situation.  The exorcist was perfectly capable of cleansing a stranger’s home, but not her own?  Liza called Charles for help (seriously?) and he admitted that he’d been heavily involved in the occult and Satan worshipping since high school, hence the origin of Kat’s possession.  As all shows miraculously end, Liza bound the spirit to a physical object and buried it, thus ending everybody’s paranormal activity.

  

       Halfway through their story I was bored, and had I not already decided to review it, I would have found something else to watch during the first commercial break.  Then I realized, it was only 10:30 and there was still a half hour left of the show.  I thought perhaps their entity would come back with a vengeance but then a new cast of characters filled the screen.  At first I thought –great!  I can watch something better now! – but I decided to give the last half hour a try.  And oddly enough, the second story seemed to combat some of the complaints I had in the first half hour.

​

       For one, Charles’s actor kept making videos of Kat’s possession; knife welding outburst and horribly bloody scratches.  Yet there was no actual video of these episodes.  A dramatization of a video just doesn’t cut it.  Second, I was beginning to have a problem with the show’s name, “I’ll Haunt You When I’m Dead”.   This is something you say to someone you actually know, so an evil entity brought forth by Satan worshipping seemed hokey and overplayed.

​

       The second haunting involved lesbian couple Mary and Christina, and that scored points for me right there, especially in a pilot episode.  While their dramatizations weren’t portrayed that much better than Charles and Kat’s, the real women seemed genuine enough for me to develop an interest in their plight.  They too just happened to know psychic medium Leanne Thomas and they too documented their meeting with her.  (Cue the cell phone video dramatization and subsequent eye roll.)  But wait.  After that, they did show the “actual” cell phone footage, and while I couldn’t see anything in the helpful circle on the screen, I was at least happy they tried.  Leanne discovered that the spirit haunting them was Mary’s mother, who was unhappy that her daughter was in a gay relationship.  Or was it because her ashes were in an urn on the mantel and she wanted them buried in a Christian graveyard?  By the end of their story I wasn’t sure why her mother was tormenting them, but they were enduring the haunting while they saved up the money to place her ashes in sacred ground.

​

       All in all, I don’t think I’d give I’ll Haunt You When I’m Dead a second chance.  It’s very similar to a lot of today’s ghost encounter shows, but it just falls flat where it could have potential.  Little details, like better acting and more realistic looking dramatizations really do make a difference.  Sure we know we’re not watching actual footage, but we’d at least like to be scared into thinking it’s possible and not just laughing at the fact of how fake it is.  Unfortunately, this show won’t be haunting anybody anytime soon.