Shannon Alexander’s 2023 documentary It’s Coming is an eery slow-burn documentary that leaves the viewers with a lot of questions — not to mention a serious case of the creeps. The documentary premiered at the 2023 Hot Docs film festival in Toronto, Canada, which is the largest documentary festival in North America. It’s Coming was part of the Nightvision programming, and it did not disappoint.
Paranormal documentaries are a difficult genre to pull off effectively. It’s Coming offers a genuinely unique entry into the somewhat crowded niche. This kind of documentary or reality TV usually follows one of two formats: a team of ghost hunters (“experts”) going to reportedly haunted locations and trying to capture evidence of the paranormal, or talking head interviews with people describing their experiences with the paranormal, sometimes with dramatized reenactments (and often very production effects). It’s Coming is really a fusion of both, but done with an intimacy that amplifies the suspense and humanizes the people being haunted. This is less of a story about ghosts and more a story about one family going through a very unusual set of challenges.
It’s Coming Claims To Feature Ghosts — Does It?
It’s Coming actually began as another documentary that was focused on people who experience sleep paralysis. Mother of five Ashley Roland-White claims to have been seeing spirits her whole life, having experienced some horrific first-hand paranormal encounters. Now an adult, she looks to have passed on this unique trait to two of her children — that, or the dark figure she first saw as a child has decided to haunt her kids too. The documentary crew shifted gears to make a new film, centered on these strange occurrences and the family’s struggles to find reprieve.
Trying to translate the uncomfortable feeling of sensing something isn’t quite right is hard to do in the documentary format — anyone familiar with series like Ghost Adventures, 28 Days Haunted, or The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch can attest to this. Great efforts are made to dramatize the “evidence,” using various gadgets to varying degrees of believability. This is almost always in the form of unexplained audio and visual abnormalities in recordings — for example, vague whisperings or unexplained balls of light.
It’s Coming presents some of these phenomena: a microphone falls suddenly, Ashley records some eery sounds, etc. If you were hoping to see bleeding walls or thrown objects, you’ll leave disappointed. In terms of the “evidence” in the film, it’s pretty weak even by the incredibly low standards of the genre. Most of the thrills come from the interviews, especially with the children. They genuinely seem afraid, and it’s hard not to sympathize with that.
It’s Coming Shows The Dangers Of ‘Hauntings’
The creepiest part of It’s Coming is the behavior of the young son Javier, who shows signs of being haunted — or even possibly the early stages of possession. At least that’s what his mother Ashley and paranormal investigators seem to suspect. Given the young man’s age, his slightly off-putting discussions of dark figures and an imaginary playmate named Kitty are frightening. Some of these interviews feel like the first act of The Exorcist. Ashely has spoken candidly about her “powers” (her words, not mine) in front of her children, and they too are believers. It makes for compelling content. It’s also incredibly exploitative.
At the risk of being a wet blanket, I worry It’s Coming crosses a line in terms of how it depicts Javier and his siblings. Obviously, this is done with the mother’s consent, but it is questionable if she is objective in this regard. Ashley truly believes she has the ability to see spirits and that her family is being haunted; it’s clear that she cares deeply for her children and their wellbeing, but maybe her experiences and perspective have hampered her sense of what is and isn’t appropriate. Filming the children as they are asked repeatedly to describe their nightmares, and pushing them to talk about things they don’t want to talk about feels wrong. It’s hard not to judge the adults making decisions in this situation — is it really in the children’s best interest to indulge this fantasy? And if it is genuine supernatural activity, why burden the kids with it?
Putting aside the ethical concerns, It’s Coming is a spooky, but largely uneventful, paranormal documentary. True believers may find the personal story of the family’s experience harrowing in It’s Coming, but non-believers are more likely to be horrified by the dynamic in the home.
TVOvermind Rating: 3/5
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