Directed by David C. Fowler Jr | Reviewed
by Anushka Dutta
Film director, Associate Producer, Director of Photography
and Editor of the 4K multi-award winning feature film
‘Paranormal Investigators’ David C. Fowler Jr from Seattle,
Washington resurfaces with a supernatural horror drama
juxtaposed with comic elements, starring Tomaz Baskin as
Carl Anderson, Elijah Al’Malik as Elliot Day and Gabriela
Noble as Erin Davis among others. Winner of seven awards at
the Oniros Film Awards, New York and two awards at the Milan
Gold Awards, Fowler takes one more step to keep up with the
huge success from his directorial debut in 2017, ‘Big
Trouble In Seattle’, which was an instant hit.
Fowler’s
latest work captures the resolution of young minds to defy
the norm and be bold enough to pursue their childhood
passions and desires, and the willpower to stay focussed and
not give up despite the lack of support from society and
their loved ones. The film centres around Elliot Day, who
has studied Parapsychology inspired by his father, someone
who had wanted to know about “the truth of the existence of
the paranormal” and Carl Anderson, whose journey in the
realm of the supernatural began when he encountered an
unsettling experience with a spectre in his childhood.
Carl
and Elliot leave behind their regular jobs and establish the
Paranormal Investigators. As a couple of local ghost
hunters, they struggle between their firm faith in the
supernatural and the realities of life. They come across
several leads in the beginning but, to their dismay, are met
with logical explanations for every case. Stuck in a spiral
of unpaid rents and lack of business exposure, they decide
to look into a house where a mad clergyman tried to
reincarnate an evil spirit using human sacrifices shortly
after World War 2. It is there that they come across the
case of Erin Davis. The PI team, with the addition of a
third member, Nick Allen (Connor Heilborn), goes off in the
world to fight dark energies using several specialized
gadgets invented by Anderson that locate, disintegrate, and
remove or capture the supernatural beings causing havoc in
the city and terrorizing its residents. In the film,
Anderson uses a Paranormal Detector to identify the presence
and position of nearby metaphysical activities. After their
first contact with a vile apparition and defeating the same
at the house of Bryan Delaney, he tells the reporters that
Anderson has designed the Automatic 2000 to shoot a blast
that stuns and disperses the spirit while the High-Power
Vacuum pulls the debris into a holding tank, keeping it safe
until it can be properly disposed of.
‘Paranormal
Investigators’, Fowler’s recent feature film, meets the
standard of on-screen performances – especially the
impressive work of Sam Schragel, playing the primary
evildoer Barron. The sound effects used in the film are
strictly diegetic, and they complement the corresponding
visual effects of the weather outside as well as the ominous
occurrences and activities taking place in secret tunnels.
Fowler uses the moon multiple times in the film to symbolize
something dark, menacing and sinister approaching soon. To
emphasise this, the film opens with a janitor singing along
to Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. The exact lines would
be:
“I see a little silhouette of a man,
Scaramouch, Scaramouch, will you do the Fandango!
Thunderbolts and lightning, very, very frightening me”
– as if already indicating the arrival of something
mysterious, something occultic and otherworldly, and most
certainly diabolical.
However,
the black, forbidding ambience of the film is subtly mixed
with comic dialogues to lighten the mood. For instance, at
Delaney’s house, when Carl and Elliot discover a ghost for
the first time since leaving their jobs, Carl asks Elliot to
distract the spirit with his manly charms, to which the
latter replies, “I like my women alive, Carl, not dead.”
Overall, with fine acting, decent cinematography, amateur
sound and visual effects, Fowler and his team have come up
with a handsome plot.”
Anushka
Dutta is a student of English Honours, and a
part-time content writer. A writer, singer and an artist;
they have worked as an ambassador for Japan Film Festival in
2020 organized in Kolkata, India. They are a professional
singer and have done playback singing in movies.
