Storytelling app ‘Haunting Melissa’ channels digital-age spirit

Neal Edelstein wants to put a ghost in your machine.

To be more precise, the producer of spooky films including “The Ring” and “Mulholland Dr.” wants to plant a specter in your iPhone and your iPad. In May, Edelstein’s new production company, Hooked Digital Media, launched a storytelling app called “Haunting Melissa” that delivers to users’ Apple devices a creepy ghost film about a girl who is being haunted by her dead mother.

It’s not really a film, but it’s not a exactly a TV show, either. The hybrid is part of a new breed of entertainment made possible by the digital revolution and marks another avenue for consumers to watch programming without a television.

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Though Edelstein won’t reveal its number of subscribers, the storytelling app has the potential to help further shape the way a new generation of consumers receives programming.

“This app, this channel, this world is our whole environment,” said Edelstein during a sit-down interview. “From the icon design to what’s inside, to the content we push, it’s the television channel — the movie theater of now.”

In keeping with the free-spirited digital age, “Haunting Melissa” is not chained to a rigid programming schedule. Instead, thanks to the cinema-based app developed by Edelstein’s company, the story rolls out new episodes at unexpected times and in varying lengths. (The app also sends push notifications when a new chapter is available for viewing.)

The idea for “Haunting Melissa” came to Edelstein when, so to speak, an Apple fell onto his head. It was 2011 and he discovered Apple’s iPad.

“I looked at it and said, ‘This is the most powerful, unbelievable thing I’ve ever held,’” said Edelstein, who has always had a keen interest in technology. “I have a secure network from the iTunes storefront to this never-before-seen window, this backlit screen. I want to tell a ghost story, and I want to target teens because I know they are going to gobble these devices up. Which they are now. It’s frightening how little teens go to the movies.”

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In 2012, the 12- to 17-year-old age group represented just 11% of moviegoers and 12% of tickets sold, according to the Motion Picture Assn. of America’s annual theatrical market statistics. Meanwhile, tablets and smartphones are gaining currency with teens, and quickly.

Nearly 40% of teens own a smartphone (up from 23% in 2011) and close to 25% own a tablet computer, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

The pilot opens with the show’s namesake Skyping with her boyfriend, who is away at college. Her mother has recently died and her detached father is out of town. Then in an increasingly unsettling sequence of events, Melissa becomes convinced that her mother is haunting her.

The series is filmed in the shaky, hand-held manner popularized by “The Blair Witch Project.” The conceit being that it is entirely recorded by Melissa herself — or by her friends — on computers and iPhones. (Viewers are also privy to her texts and instant messages as well as her video diary.)

Episodes, unlike with Netflix’s “House of Cards” or “Arrested Development,” cannot be binge-viewed. When a viewer completes an episode, the app starts a clock and in a predesignated amount of time unlocks a new chapter later.

Also, by design, the episodes are rolled out at irregular intervals, and could just as easily pop up at 4 a.m. Saturday as at 2 p.m. Monday. The next episode could land five days after the previous one, or five minutes.

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Likewise, the show plays with episode length as well — varying the time anywhere between 20 seconds to 20 minutes. In addition, each episode changes with subsequent views. Edelstein calls these subtle shifts — in which an audio or visual element will disappear and then possibly reappear later — “dynamic story elements.”

A “season pass” to all 11 or so episodes of “Haunting Melissa” costs $14.99, about the price of a movie ticket, or about two months of streaming Netflix. Episodes can also be bought a la carte as well, for 99 cents, or $1.99 in HD.

Despite the shiny new technology that “Haunting Melissa” employs, its star, Kassia Warshawski, who plays a girl left alone in a creaky old farmhouse in Canada, says that making it was quite traditional.

“When I first heard about this new concept I was so excited, but I didn’t understand how we were going to go about filming it,” said Warshawski. “But to be honest, it was like filming a regular movie.”

Edelstein considers the app a living, breathing thing, and he is constantly updating it and pushing new content to it. He fine-tunes the changes according to data mined from users’ devices.

“We follow a practice of ‘build, measure, learn,’” says Aber Whitcomb, an advisor for Hooked who co-founded MySpace. “Every time we release an update to the app, we’re reacting to what people are telling us and how they’re using it.”

jessica.gelt@latimes.com