The Enfield Poltergeist
Dir Jerry Rothwell, UK 2023
Streaming on Apple TV+
An incident familiar to readers of Fortean Times – the goings on at 284 Green Street, Enfield, between 1977 and 1979 – have been documented, dramatised and regurgitated many times over the intervening decades, in recent years, most notably, in Sky’s three-part series The Enfield Haunting (2015). The case of an alleged poltergeist/demonic possession in a London suburb has been hard to resist, even for film-makers outside the UK: 2016 saw The Conjuring 2 tackle the subject, albeit with a shaky grasp of the details and much invention. Now, Apple+ reckon it’s time for another crack at it.
To give the series its due, the makers have hit upon a method of relating the story in a fresh and unusual manner. Theman who was chiefly responsible for investigating the case. That is to say, when the cast are acting out scenes you don’t hear them voicing their own lines; rather they are lip-synching to those audio tapes. The intention no doubt is remove any concern that the film-makers are inventing dialogue or overdoing the noises the ‘poltergeist’ made. They really are striving for as much accuracy as they can, which is commendable.
