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GHOST STORIES
Directors: Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman Cast: Andy Nyman, Martin Freeman, Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther, Nicholas Burns, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Daniel Hill MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:38 Release Date: 4/20/18 (limited); 4/27/18 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 19, 2018 The finale of Ghost Stories offers one of those endings that makes you reconsider everything that has come before it. It's also one of those endings that makes you wonder what the point of everything that came before it was. The screenplay by directors Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, which is based on the duo's play, is almost an anthology of three tales of the supernatural. With its framing device, it comes out to four. With the implications of the movie's final reveal, though, there's only one story that actually matters. The ultimately reductive nature of the narrative provides a bit of a surprise, but it's not nearly enough to make up for the abundance of questions that come with it. Was anything that we saw actually real? Can we trust anything that we have learned about the character who turns out to be one of primary importance? At what point does the movie's façade begin—after a certain point within the movie or sometime before the narrative starts? If it's the former option, have the filmmakers given us any warning about the shift, or is it just a cheat? If it's the latter option, doesn't that make the entire movie a cheat? To be fair, there are hints and clues that something is happening beneath the surface here, from the strange names of certain places to a series of numbers that prominently appear in the background. There's clearly a deeper mystery here. As we're watching the story unfold, we assume that the answer is either related to the movie's other mystery—an examination of a series of allegedly supernatural occurrences—or something else entirely. One, at least, would be consistent. The other is what we actually get. The story itself follows Professor Goodman (Nyman), a professional skeptic and debunker of paranormal phenomena. We first meet him as part of a documentary about his work, as he takes down a fraudulent psychic in dramatic fashion on stage at one of the fraud's shows. Goodman had a strictly religious upbringing, but now he believes all of that stuff is a bunch of hooey. The plot, such as it is, arrives when Goodman is summoned by one of his heroes, the man who popularized the exposing of supernatural deceptions, Charles Coleman (played by Leonard Byrne as younger man and by a different actor, under a lot of old-age makeup, whose identity is supposed to be a secret but is pretty obvious). Coleman disappeared under strange circumstances, but he's revealing himself to Goodman so that the professor can complete a task for him. There are three cases of supposed supernatural occurrences that Coleman could never solve. Surely, this younger skeptic can figure them out and put the sick, old man's mind at ease. Maybe, though, it will give Goodman a new perception on the world—that there might be some things in this world beyond the comprehension of his doubting philosophy. The three stories involve a night watchman named Tony Matthews (Paul Whitehouse), an amateur occult researcher named Simon Rifkind (Alex Lawther), and a financial marketer named Mike Priddle (Martin Freeman). Goodman visits each of them, looking to find a rational explanation for their stories, and each one's story unfolds in flashback. What we're presented with, basically, is a trio of generic horror scenarios—all three set in against a clichéd backdrop, filled with a series of jump-scares, and ending just when things start to get interesting. Tony tells about his job working security at an abandoned asylum for women, where, one night, he wanders around the place as the power occasionally goes out, some noises are being made, and visions of a young girl appear before him. Simon's tale involves a monster on forest road late at night. Mike recalls some strange happenings in the nursery of his vast mansion, while his wife is at the hospital after some complications with her pregnancy. Dyson and Nyman display some basic competency with these horror situations and the usual scare tactics. The locales are creepy and distinct enough, especially with cinematographer Ole Bratt Birkeland's selective lighting and ability to give each tale a slightly varied atmosphere (The asylum is oppressively dark, while the mansion possess the eerie glow of mood lighting). The only things we really get from each story, though, are frightening entities appearing in frame, loud musical stings, and an anticlimactic resolution. The point, apparently, is that Goodman learns something from each story—mostly that things aren't always as they appear, but also that, even if these paranormal things didn't really happen, they still taught the participants something about themselves. This is, ultimately, Goodman's story, although we have no idea exactly how or why it is his story until the movie's final minutes. Within that eventual context, the rest of Ghost Stories feels like an elaborate distraction from Dyson and Nyman's essential point. The sum of the movie's parts doesn't convince us of the whole, and like each of the other individual stories, the final, overarching one ends just as its piques our interest. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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