Review: The Lowe Files set the paranormal hunting bar pretty low
Rob Lowe’s paranormal investigation show The Lowe Files premiered Wednesday night on A&E and the only scary thing about it was how misplaced our excitement for it had been.
I’ve been weirdly excited about The Lowe Files. Something about the combination of charming, ageless actor Rob Lowe; a family roadtrip; and hunting for Bigfoot sounded like television gold to me (and I emphasize “to me” here, I understand that combination maybe sounds pretty random to a lot of people). The A&E series premiered on Wednesday night and I’m sorry to say: I was disappointed.
Rob Lowe gets points in my book for playing two of the greatest TV characters of all time: sharp, ambitious deputy White House communications director (you know, back when that was an impressive job title to hold) Sam Seaborn on The West Wing; and absurdly perky parks department staffer Chris Traeger on Parks and Rec. So, not being super familiar with Rob Lowe the actual IRL man, I was hoping for big things from him in his natural element. And he was…fine. Maybe I was putting too much pressure on him. He seemed very aware of the fact that they were on camera at all times and, likely because of that, a little hammier and more canned than I would have liked.
The premiere kicked off with Lowe cruising down a scenic California road with his two sons, Matthew and John Owen, and, no joke, casually name-dropping recent acting projects Parks and Rec and Code Black before mentioning that Matthew and John Owen attend (or attended?) highly prestigious universities Duke and Stanford, respectively. The whole show has a real humble-braggy vibe, but I probably should have seen that coming considering the premise of the show is “good-looking famous man and his kids you’ve never heard of drive around looking for ghosts and get a TV show about it because they can.”
In that vein, Lowe quickly lets us know that his good shaman friend is going to be meeting the trio at their spooky destination of the week: a famously haunted former boys reformatory dating back to the late 1800s. In terms of a prime location to launch a show about paranormal mysteries, this pick was a good one. There was a moment when the hulking building appears in the distance and it’s the stuff of haunted late 1800s boys reformatory dreams, or, more appropriately, nightmares. All ominous turrets and late 19th century architecture, the place basically screams “Hey! I’m full of ghosts!”
Once they actually get inside the reformatory, the hyped-up supernatural occurrences seem to be just that: hyped-up. EMF (electromagnetic field) sensors wiggle and light up. A ball moves. What I was most startled by is the beds they’re laying on in the reformatory: where did they come from? Are they actual beds the delinquent boys slept on back in the day, and if so, isn’t that pretty gross? More likely, the crew worked with whoever runs the place and had clean beds brought in, but still, it’s more fun to imagine the former explanation.
Next: 3 things The Lowe Files fans will love: The Rabbit Hole
I haven’t given up hope on the show quite yet. The premiere was only the first episode and maybe the men get into more of a ghost-and-other-creature-hunting groove as the series progresses. I get that Lowe (who’s also a producer for the show) was given free rein to try to turn his sons into reality stars but at this point, I don’t really see it. They’re not particularly exciting to watch. But I’m hoping when they’re faced with aliens or sasquatches in the episodes to come, things may pick up a little. If not? I may just have to ghost.