Review

The Winchester Bros are hitting Richardson, West Texas to get the good oil on an urban legend surrounding the derelict and spooky looking Morton Mansion. Seems every leap year the resident revenant, Freeman Daggett, adds a few more victims to his growing birthday list, the Winchesters are aiming to put an end to the festivities. However the Bros discover they are not alone with the former Hellhounds Ed and Harry already setup in the house along with their motley crew of sidekicks, Maggie, Kenny, and Corbett. Seems Ed and Harry are filming a pilot for a proposed television show called Ghostfacers.

With ghostly echoes going down the Ghostfacers think they are onto television nirvana, but Sam and Dean are well aware it's only the entree for a spiritual smorgasbord of mayhem. When Corbett and then Sam go missing things take a serious turn, especially when the shade of Corbett goes echo on us. With Freeman Daggett screaming out "it's my party and I'll kill if I want to" everyone finds themselves trapped in the house with the psycho phantom looking to increase his guest list. All roads lead to an underground fallout shelter, can Dean and the surviving Ghostfacers unlock the secret of Morton Mansion before anyone else get's their cake, and doesn't get to eat it.

Well it's taken three seasons but Supernatural has finally bitten the bullet and gone with a found footage approach in an episode, albeit as a movie within a movie. For those with attention spans somewhat longer than the average teen, Ed and Harry were last seen in the season one episode Hell House as the Hellhounds running a website dedicated to supernatural phenomena. If you'll remember Dean ended up sending them on a wild goose chase to L.A. The dynamic duo return here as leaders of a ghost busting team called the "Ghostfacers", and are naturally as ill equipped to deal with the supernatural as they were previously. The found footage angle comes from the film stock being shot for a reality Television show, that has a faint hint of sending up Ghost Hunters, an asinine series that preys on those who believe "the truth is out there" with exactly zero evidence.

In amongst the mayhem of Winchesters versus Ghostfacers, and guess there's an angle of people driven to fight the supernatural as opposed to making a buck from it, there's also a pretty good horror story going down. I was reminded of Happy Birthday to Me, for obvious reasons, but also the season one episode of Masters of Horror, Incident On and Off a Mountain Road. The malevolent spirit operates almost in a slasher role cutting down the herd one member at a time. Surprisingly writer Ben Edlund has time in his busy schedule to give us the full background story to Freeman Daggett and more importantly provides motivation for the sinister spectre. I was bobbing along to the horror concept and believe the episode could have worked if the Writer simply focused on this aspect.

Naturally there's a lot of humour involved in the episode, though surprisingly that humour comes almost entirely from the Ghostfacers as Sam and Dean get down to business. It makes something of a change to see the Winchester Bros being serious, taking charge, and shockingly being real professional. Usually the Winchesters are scrambling for the answers in a sea of one liners and events beyond their control. In this episode Ed and Harry and team provide the humour as they bumble through the investigation, letting out girly shrieks whenever something slightly paranormal goes down. Or in Harry's case when a rat haunts the mansion and causes him to run for his life in terror from the rodent horror.

They could actually throw more of this found footage in my direction and I wouldn't be complaining

If I had to aim at criticism at the episode, and yes I realise a lot of people are going to take issue with the episode, it would be that the only two times we have run across Ed and Harry have both been in haunted houses with a revenant on the loose. Probably due to the Writers' strike, but scribe Edlund could have perhaps gone with something slightly different as we pretty much get the same situation as we have previously seen. And you pretty much know how this one is going to turn out, the Winchesters once again outsmarting our would be ghost busters.

Ghostfacers is pretty much a standalone episode, there's mention at one stage of Dean only having a few weeks left, so yes we are treading water somewhat before driving on down to the season climax and no doubt cliff hanger ending. I'm actually cool with that, let's not drag things out too much and this might just be the last season that the Winchester Bros saddle up together therefore we want a few reminders of how the franchise rolls. Actually if you believe Dean isn't coming back in season four, then you aren't keeping your radar up and running. Regardless of which characters bite the dust, Dean and Sam are sacrosanct in the Supernatural universe.

The episode faltered the decent run of Supernatural results through season three with a ball busting drop to a season low of 2.2 million viewers in North America. That's getting near rock bottom for the franchise and doesn't bode well, though once again a Writers' strike tends to put a kink in about everything it touches. No doubt studio execs however will be running a weathered eye over results for season four.

In terms of mullet rock, who let the dogs out! We get the "Ghostfacers Theme", Grand Funk Railroad rocking out with "We're An American Band", Focus switching it up with "Hocus Pocus", and finally Leslie Gore telling us "It's My Party". I'm pretty happy with the music this episode, about time more attention was given to this aspect of the show.

Excellent episode for those of us that don't mind a spot of "found footage", no you don't need to worry about shaky cam. Clearly now that we're almost at the end of season three it's time to have some fun with the show's format, don't think many people are going to complain if the Producers keep it under control and only go to the well once or twice per season. Recommended to fans of the show and also part time viewers.