The Lockdown Hauntings

I notoriously ALWAYS finish a movie. My wife even makes fun of me for it, calling it a waste of my time.

Well... I found my white whale. The first movie in literally decades I couldn't be bothered to finish. With just 12 minutes left, I couldn't justify the waste of time and braincell function to keep on watching this movie with a, honestly, interesting concept.

I forgive the actors. We all have to start somewhere, right? But the writing, pasing, cinematography and sound design... I just couldn't anymore.

I spend the 12 minutes doing something stimulating, by cleaning the vegetable drawer in my refrigerstor.

I recently watched the UK film 🇬🇧 The Lockdown Haunting (2021) on Tubi. The storyline is set during the Covid-19 pandemic, where everyone is in lockdown. The spirit of a serial killer is unleashed and begins targeting people isolated at home. Can a group of ghost hunters track down the spirit and save society?

Directed by Howard J. Ford (Never Let Go), the film stars Tony Todd (Candyman), Angela Dixon (Never Let Go), Heather Peace (Screwed), and Justin K. Hayward (Escape).

I'll generally watch anything Tony Todd is in, but unfortunately, he isn't used much here. His opening narration is solid, but after that, he's hardly seen. The remaining actors give performances that feel more suited for a made-for-TV movie, and it's hard to care about the characters or their fates. The film feels low-budget, with subpar CGI, and often seems like it's trying too hard.

In conclusion, The Lockdown Haunting doesn't offer much beyond a strong opening narration by Tony Todd. I'd give it a 3/10 and recommend skipping it.

As boring as lockdown was for all of us, this was pretty bad even by the standards of nothing to do for months on end. Pretty sure it was written, directed, and acted during lockdown to be silly, but meh.

I'd just write "zzzz" and you'd know everything you need to know about this movie. But IMDB wants more words.

Tony Todd does a small cameo, wow, I guess his die-hard followers had to rate this higher than it's worth because of that fact. Still doesn't make it any better than a "zzzz" flick.

DISCLOSURE: I'm a friend of a cast member, so I must recuse myself from giving a rating and instead, I'll submit a brief interpretation.

"Fear is something horrible, an atrocious sensation, a sort of decomposition of the soul," (Guy de Maupassant, 'Le Peur' 1882).

A bustling, vibrant metropolis, eerily, unnervingly quiet; these are the opening images that lead us into the surreal paranoid world of London and the UK under Lockdown. We are introduced to the characters who fear for loved ones, for their lives, for their uncertain futures. All they know is that they have no control or power over unseen and unforeseeable events.

Against this background, a serial killer has emerged, elusive in the extreme; not only are they no signs of break-ins, there are no forensic clues at all. To compound the mystery, the detective assigned to the case is herself under quarantine, waiting for test results to see if she is infected.

The unknown unseen killer could represent COVID and how easily it can be transmitted. We sense the alienation and impotence of the characters, lacking the support of friends, family and institutions. Everyone is alone and vulnerable and the deaths are the personification of extreme paranoia in extreme circumstances. We are not scared of what we know, but of what we don't know.

'The Lockdown Hauntings' is a valuable source for how people lived and felt in the early 2020s as even at time of writing, we don't know if the vaccines work (solve the case) or if new mutant variants will arise ...