Ghost Stories: Review

I rocked up at the exclusive ‘ODEON Scream Unseen’ hoping for A Quiet Place or, at a push, The Strangers 2, but, instead, I watched a British horror film called Ghost Stories. The film was a strange one. A movie of two different halves, Ghost Stories unsuccessfully shifts from an effective horror anthology picture to an entirely different, and altogether, more confusing movie.

Goodman finds that his scepticism is called into question as he, himself, becomes the victim of strange hauntings

Professor Phillip Goodman (Andy Nyman) is a paranormal sceptic who has dedicated his life to debunking frauds and fakes, emulating his idol: the missing paranormal investigator, Charles Cameron. One day, Cameron turns up and explains that his disappearance was inspired by a crisis of belief that there are three cases that he was unable to solve which led him to the conclusion that the paranormal is, in fact, real. He decides to challenge a set of men including Goodman; Tony (Paul Whitehouse), a night watchman who sees the ghost of a young girl in an abandoned asylum; a young man named Simon (Alex Lawther) who encounters a demonic creature on a country road; and finally, Mike (Martin Freeman), a businessman whose desire for a child leads to poltergeist activity. However, Goodman finds that his scepticism is called into question as he, himself, becomes the victim of strange hauntings.

Ghost Stories is a film of various different chapters which all work on different levels. This concept means that what we’re left with is essentially four stories in one film – a nice variety that offer some different frights (jump scares may be more accurate), though they aren’t quite as suspenseful as they attempt to be.

Whitehouse’s section is the most frightening and effective sequence in the film as he commands the screen throughout. It’s a shame it ended up being the first case. Similarly, Lawther is very strong in his section, managing to seem like a real person and be absolutely hilarious in his terror – an entire film centred on him and his character would have been perfect. Martin Freeman, as he always does, plays Martin Freeman. Nyman’s investigator is a solid lead, but there’s not really that much to him. Other than a crisis of faith that barely ever crops up again, that’s about all there is to him.

I had to Google the ending afterwards because I could not follow what had happened

Speaking of Goodman, these sections help nudge him towards his final realisation, and it’s here that Ghost Stories loses its way. It seems that the movie transitions into a different one and this transition relies on a level of character development and foreshadowing that simply doesn’t happen. The movie pulls an unearned twist about an hour in that essentially is touting its own cleverness, and it is somewhat tricky to follow. I had to Google the ending afterwards because I did not follow what had happened (and, looking at the Twitter reaction afterwards, I was not the only one). It’s always good when filmmakers try to be ambitious and do something different, but this is an ending that just doesn’t work, and actually detracts from what has already happened in the film.

Other reviews of Ghost Stories have presented this as a ‘masculinity in crisis’ movie, or a ‘faith in crisis’ movie, but I don’t really think that it lays enough groundwork for it to really be either. It’s an interesting film as it’s really competently done and certain elements elicit jumps and scare, but it tries to be cleverer than it is. It runs out of steam and falls flat; there’s too much going on, and simultaneously, not enough. It’s very good until it starts to unravel at the end, at which point it becomes less of a scary movie and more of a missed opportunity.