By David Dent
Separately Stephen Staley and Natasha Tosini have enjoyed diverse parts in many of Scott Jeffrey’s previous productions (including several entries in the Twisted Child Universe ‘franchise’), but this is their first joint directing gig.
Perhaps taking a leaf out of the Steven M. Smith playbook – ie an obsession with ‘live’ paranormal shows, a no longer au courant idea, The Haunting at Jack the Ripper’s House focuses on a group of YouTubing ghost hunters. Their show, ‘The Haunt Hunters’, devised by friends Richard (Jack Hyde) and Jake (Jack Hoy), involves a group of influencers travelling to supposedly haunted locations and staging materialisations; the more hits they get, the wilder the hoaxes.
A creative bust up between the creators sends Richard packing, just about the same time as Jake secures the show’s biggest set up yet; Jack the Ripper’s house. OK this needs a bit of explaining; Aaron Kosminski was one of the key suspects in the initial Ripper murders investigations. Ripperolgists have tracked down Kosminski’s UK hideout, the delightfully named ‘Ripper Manor’ (in reality I think it’s a youth hostel, judging by the fire doors), currently owned by a creepy guy called Victor (Robert Hedley). Despite the proprietor’s objections, Jake’s people have managed to secure the property for a night of spook hunting. But they’re about to find out that this is one house that doesn’t need its ghostly activity to be faked.
Apart from the modern social media trappings, this is basically a rerun of the 1969 movie The Haunted House of Horror, where swinging teenagers are picked off one by one by a mysterious presence in a supposedly haunted house.
For most of the film, the ‘Ripper’ element looks tacked on as an audience pull (the title is total audience bait) but happily things do get rather strange in the movie’s last third. But before we get there we have to go through a lot of indifferent acting, shots filmed in near darkness and, well, lots of wandering around. I was initially thinking that Staley and Tosini may have rushed to finish the film to get it to FrightFest (there are some line fluffs and clumsy edits), but no, it was actually made last year. Frankly people it’s just not that good; all power to the director/producers for trying something a little different, but even so…
The Haunting at Jack the Ripper’s House screened as part of Frightfest 2025.
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