Horror Favourites – Dominic O’Neill

Combining found footage horror, folklore and a nostalgia for regional television, Haunted Ulster Live recreates a familiar world of 90’s light entertainment which, much like Belfast itself during the Northern Ireland Troubles, is haunted by something unseen and sinister. Written and directed by Dominic O’Neill we grabbed the man himself for a chat about his favorite scary movie.

On Halloween night 1998, Northern Ireland TV veteran Gerry Burns teams up with popular new children’s presenter Michelle Kelly to investigate poltergeist activity in a reputedly haunted house in Belfast. Light entertainment turns to horror when an unseen terror reveals itself.

The film premiered at FrightFest 2023 with an Irish premiere at Belfast Film Festival and earned acclaim at leading international genre film festivals including Fantaspoa and Panic Fest Haunted Ulster Live is available on UK and Ireland digital platforms now.

Below Dominic details the horror film that means the most to him and why:

“On Halloween night 1999 I saw The Blair Witch Project in the cinema in Belfast. We all knew it wasn’t real, but the film had taken on a life of its own. Everyone knew about it even if they had no interest in watching it. I remember people walking out of the screening, presumably in disgust at having to watch low-res video on a cinema screen. Others were visibly in shock afterwards. My friend was completely white. We’d never seen a film end like that. What has become a tired trope then felt like a devastating denouement.

The film either pushed your buttons or didn’t. Psychological horror is like that. It pushed mine. I particularly loved the lore around the witch, and Rustin Parr, and how they created an overly elaborate historical timeline, without ever explaining anything too clearly. And the confusion of the group becoming untethered in place and time, lost in the woods and then lost from each other. I can still enjoy the film 25 years later despite its many imitators.

I never envisaged my own first feature being found footage, but it made sense for the story. When I was writing Haunted Ulster Live, I drew on the documentary feel of The Blair Witch Project, and the importance of making the mythology of the story very specific to the time and place of the haunting, even at risk of alienating people who aren’t aware of the political and cultural context of Northern Ireland in the 1990’s. Even when the audience knows they’re watching a fabrication, this can create the veil they need to convince themselves for just a while that maybe it could all be real.”

Haunted Ulster Live is available on UK and Ireland digital platforms from 14 October

Haunted Ulster Live trailer