Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Enfield Poltergeist’ On Apple TV+, A Docuseries About A Violent Haunting Of A Working-Class London Family In The 1970s

The Enfield Poltergiest is a four-part docuseries, directed by Jerry Rothwell, that examines a famous 1977-78 case of the Hodgsons, a family in the Enfield section of London who claimed to be haunted by a poltergeist. There are the traditional talking head interviews involving people who documented the haunting for the BBC and newspapers like the Daily Mirror, plus relatives and friends of the Hodgsons and investigators Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair, but much of the docuseries consists of actors lip-synching over actual recordings created by Grosse, Playfair and others inside the affected house.

THE ENFIELD POLTERGEIST: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Children sleeping with their mother in a bedroom, with spooky lights and sounds floating about.

The Gist: Maurice Grosse (Christopher Ettridge), a member of the Society for Psychical Research, was looking for a “good poltergeist case”, and when the SPR heard of the Hodgsons, they had him investigate. The family — single mother Peggy (Paula Benson), 13-year-old Margaret (Charlotte Miller), 11-year-old Janet (Olivia Booth-Ford) and 8-year-old Billy (Daniel Lee) — reported events like knocking on walls, heavy furniture moving on its own and things like Lego bricks being flung around. Grosse went to the house with a reel-to-reel tape recorder, which he used to both interview the family and capture any unusual sounds.

As Grosse gathered evidence, an increasing number of people reported hearing and seeing the same things at the house, from police officers called to the scene to journalists reporting on the haunting. John Burcombe (Tom Bevan) and his son Paul (Oliver Wright), cousins and neighbors of the Hodgsons, also got involved, as much in an effort to protect the members of their family than anything else.

When Grosse presented his preliminary findings to the SPR and asked for help, Playfair (Christos Lawton), who wrote books about paranormal phenomena, volunteered. The two of them spent months at the house, every night, recording what they heard into various tape recorders.

It seemed that whatever was haunting the place fed on tension, and its attention was centered on 11-year-old Janet, who seemed to be haunted by the spirit the most. Her fear-induced insomnia got so bad that Grosse met with her educators to propose that Janet and her family go on holiday; during that time, the noises stayed in the house and didn’t follow the family. But once they came back to the house, all bets were off.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There was a 2015 scripted miniseries about this case called The Enfield Haunting, but nothing is creepier and scarier than hearing the actual recordings made inside the house.

Our Take: Anyone who has read our reviews of docuseries knows that we’re not fans of dramatic reenactments, even though we know that they’re sometimes a necessary evil of the genre. In the case of The Enfield Poltergiest, though, the lip-synched reenactments aren’t just helpful, they bring the recordings to life in a way just playing them over footage of tape recorders or some other stock footage just wouldn’t be able to accomplish.

What helps is that all of the actors are fully committed to their roles, bringing the lip-synching to life with gestures and movements that makes the viewers think they’re actually watching the real life people that are on these tapes. It’s also a testament to Rothwell’s direction that he makes sure those subtleties are brought out in their performances, which is sometimes a tough thing to do when you’re not actually uttering dialogue but needing to coordinate your movements with the rhythm of someone else’s speaking voice.

There’s just enough archival pictures and footage, along with the traditional talking head interviews, though, to give the series the right amount of docuseries legitimacy. But the lip-synched reenactments, combines with the access the recordings from Grosse, Playfair and others provide, paint an appropriately scary picture of a house that seemed to either be legitimately haunted or suffering through lots of scary, unexplainable natural phenomena.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: “Ghost is in the bedroom. This time, no warning,” Grosse reports Janet writing in her sleep. Then the camera pulls back and shows the actors on the soundstage.

Sleeper Star: Olivia Booth-Ford as Janet Hodgson stands out here, because she’s the one most haunted by the poltergeist.

Most Pilot-y Line: Some of the reenactments are more scene-setting than anything else, even if there are actual recordings underneath, like when BBC Radio reporter Roz Morris comes into the living room and tells everyone where to sit.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The Enfield Poltergeist takes a unique approach to presenting its story, but its method of having actors lip synch over actual recordings made at the Hodgsons’ home enhances just how freakishly scary the incident was.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.