‘GHOST STORIES’ Review

Ghost Stories is an anthology of paranormal tales, in a sense. The framework that surrounds them and ties the themes together is intriguing here, as there’s a bit more to it than something like the V/H/S franchise. I’m a bit cagey about divulging much about the overarching story because I think the film deserves to be seen as blindly as possible in that respect. This thing is loaded with surprises, and fear not that I’ll spoil any of them here.

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Professor Philip Goodman is setting out to prove that the paranormal isn’t real through his TV show ‘Psychic Cheats.’ His theory is that the “existential terror,” a term developed by Goodman’s hero Professor Charles Cameron, is that superstition and fear is based around the fact that we’ll do anything to deny that death is permanence. We’ll do anything to hold on to someone, even going so far as to believe they’re contacting from beyond the grave. When Cameron reaches out to Goodman saying that he needs to see him and doesn’t have long, Goodman leaps at the opportunity. Cameron is eccentric and bold, and in his old age he worries that 3 cases have haunted him enough to disprove his life’s work. Cameron needs Goodman to reassure him that he’s wrong.
Study 1: Tony Matthews (Paul Whitehouse) – A night watchman who works at an old women’s corrective facility until one evening shift’s events scared him to the bone.
Study 2: Simon Rifkind (Alex Lawther) – A young man distracted by a phone argument commits a hit and run accident in the woods which results in an unforgettable haunting.
Study 3: Mike Priddle (Martin Freeman) – A man who lost his family is haunted by the spirits of the dead.

Andy Nyman is pulling triple threat duty here as co-writer/director and lead actor as Professor Goodman, having helped adapt fellow co-writer/director Jeremy Dyson’s stage play. Neither are new to solid genre work, but Nyman has an especially soft spot with me for 2006’s gem Severance, and Charlie Brooker’s brilliant, 2008 mini-series Dead Set. As the anchor or narrator of sorts, our window, this is pretty much his movie, and he owns it. But his great performance is equally matched by Freeman…who then proceeds to steal the film entirely. Also quite great is Alex Lawther, who made some big splashes recently including Netflix’s The End of the F***ing World, and the mean Black Mirror episode ‘Shut Up and Dance.’

Oh and yes, this was originally a stage play! I’ve never thought of horror and live theater together aside from a few musicals, but I’d be interested to see how this would play out in that format. Freeman, while doing promotion for the film, recently said on The Graham Norton Show that doing horror theater is unlike anything, as the audience’s fear is captured in real time. But In this format it absolutely soars. The faux documentary style — though often darkly comedic, it’s NOT to be confused with a mockumentary — makes complete sense as a mold to fill in, and it’s not done in what one would assume today to be found footage. It is, in fact, quite the opposite. Very cinematic and wonderfully shot, this movie cranks out scares with an ease so confident that you have to wonder how so many movies get it wrong. The climax of the film is so very visual that I don’t actually know how it would work on the stage, so perhaps it was altered for this format…but wow, that climax.

I was fortunate enough to be able to watch this twice in two days. A second viewing revealed so many things which didn’t make sense or felt bizarre at the time, and I got so much more out of it with the hindsight knowledge of where the film ends up. There are hints everywhere, much like Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, and some that are so obvious you can’t believe you missed them the first time through. This is a brisk trip into ghastly terrors, the best anthology in recent memory, and it’s one of the top horror films for 2018.

Ghost Stories is available right now on VOD platforms courtesy of IFC Midnight

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