GHOST STORIES (2017)

Studio:       IFC Midnight
Director:    Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman
Writer:       Jeremy Dyson, Andy Nyman
Producer:  Claire Jones, Robin Gutch
Stars:     Andy Nyman, Paul Whitehouse, Alex Lawther, Martin Freeman, Nicholas Burns, Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, Jake Davies

Review Score:

---

Summary:

Three frightening case files compel a disbelieving professor to reconsider his skepticism of the supernatural.

---

Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

For his TV show “Psychic Cheats,” skeptic of the supernatural Professor Philip Goodman publicly debunks celebrity psychic Mark Van Rhys during a live stage show. Afterward, Philip narrates about the influence of Charles Cameron, a psychologist who also made a career out of disproving paranormal claims until he disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

Philip receives an unexpected package containing an audiocassette from Charles Cameron, who summons Philip to the trailer where he now lives. Philip meets the aged psychologist. Charles confesses that he was an arrogant academic for dismissing paranormal possibilities and calls Philip a conceited coward for doing the same. Charles presents Philip with three case files and challenges Philip to prove they aren’t authentic instances of supernatural activity. Philip sees a strange presence standing behind Charles when he leaves.

Case 1 – Tony Matthews – Philip interviews Tony Matthews, a former night watchman whose daughter Marnie was hospitalized with locked-in syndrome. Tony tells Philip about a terrifying night spent as a security guard in a former asylum. The power went out, forcing Tony to explore the seemingly haunted building. Tony ended up encountering a ghoulish girl in a yellow dress who hugged him and called him “dada.”

Philip follows up on Tony’s recollection by visiting Tony’s parish priest Father Richard Emery. Father Emery tells Philip that after Tony’s frightful encounter, Tony visited his catatonic daughter in the hospital. Doctors observed that when Marnie heard her father’s voice, her heart skipped a beat. Emery’s words inspire Philip to visit his own invalid father.

Case 2 – Simon Rifkind – Philip next visits teenager Simon Rifkind. Upon entering the Rifkind house, Philip observes Simon’s parents seemingly entranced in the kitchen. On his way up to Simon’s room, Philip notices a photograph that features a hooded figure. Philip also thinks he sees another presence upstairs, but Simon assures him they are alone.

Simon recounts how he was driving his parents’ car without a license along a dark country road alone. Distracted by repeated calls from his upset mother and father, Simon hit something that turned out to be a strange creature.

Simon drove away in fright, but became stranded when the car mysteriously lost power. While waiting for roadside assistance to arrive, an unseen creature stalked around the car. When it growled the word “stay” at him, Simon fled into the forest where he was grabbed by a tree creature.

Philip visits the site of Simon’s supposed encounter. Upon returning to his car, Philip briefly sees a ghostly vision of himself reflected in the car’s window.

Case 3 – Mike Priddle – Philip walks in remote countryside with Mike Priddle, who collects a shotgun from a locked hunter’s shed. Mike tells Philip about encountering paranormal phenomena in his home while his pregnant wife Maria was in the hospital.

Midway through Mike’s tale, Philip briefly sees the hooded figure from Simon’s photograph on the horizon.

Mike tells Philip about a second night alone in his home during which a poltergeist took shape underneath a sheet in a crib. Mike then confronted a monstrous vision of his wife who claimed the real Maria had died. Following the encounter, Mike received word from the hospital that his wife died during childbirth when their beastly baby split her in two.

After recounting his tale, Mike suddenly blows off his own head with the shotgun.

Philip returns to Charles Cameron to confront him about everything having been a hoax. To Philip’s astonishment, Charles tears off his own face, revealing the appearance of Mike Priddle underneath. Mike tells Philip “the brain sees what it wants to see” before ripping a tear in reality and escorting Philip outside through the portal.

Mike takes Philip to a tunnel by a stream where the hooded figure still stalks Philip. Mike vanishes. Philip relives a flashback of two boys bullying him at the location as a child.

A mentally handicapped boy named Desmond Callahan, who is teased with the nickname ‘Kojak,’ is revealed to be the hooded figure when he inadvertently interrupts. While Philip does nothing, the two bullies convince Kojak he can join their gang by finding a number on a wall deep in the dark tunnel. The bullies force the frightened boy to remain in the tunnel even after he expresses his desire to leave. Kojak ends up dying from an asthma attack brought on by panic.

Mike returns to confront adult Philip over his passive role in allowing Desi to die. Philip makes excuses for his guilt.

A crib suddenly appears. Mike feeds cat food to his beastly baby before walking away cradling the unseen creature.

A ghoulish vision of Kojak bursts from the crib to attack Philip. Kojak rips Philip’s clothes to reveal he is wearing a hospital gown underneath. Kojak tears reality just as Mike did earlier and escorts Philip down a corridor to a hospital bed. Kojak lies on top of Philip until Philip falls into a coma from his terror.

It is revealed that Philip has been catatonic in a hospital bed since a failed suicide attempt. Mike Priddle and Simon Rifkind are shown to be the doctors evaluating Philip’s condition while Tony Matthews is the custodian who cleans his room.

---

Review:

It’s a great sign you’re in creatively capable hands when a movie establishes all the background you could want on a main character without spoken dialogue or obvious handholding.  Turning their hit London stage play into a feature film, co-writers/co-directors Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman begin “Ghost Stories” with a flashback montage of Professor Philip Goodman’s bar mitzvah.  Through what looks like throwaway clips accompanying opening credits, silent home movies paint a remarkably robust portrait of a childhood steeped in strict Judaism while shadowed by an overbearing father, details seeded to play important parts later.

Dyson and Nyman possess subtle storytelling style in spades.  This quick hit barely adds a snowflake to their iceberg’s tip.

“Ghost Stories” dresses itself as a classically creepy collection of terror tales, but it really serves as a brief biography for its tour guide Philip. Somewhat snooty about scientific superiority, Philip is a skeptic of the supernatural who has made a career out of dashing people’s beliefs in the afterlife and psychic phenomenon.

When the reformed debunker he modeled himself after, psychologist Charles Cameron, challenges Philip to reconsider his reasoning, Philip strikes out alone to investigate three purportedly paranormal case files Charles couldn’t crack. The individuals interviewed force Philip to confront his skewed views on religion, reality, and a secret from his past that has found a new way to haunt him.

“Ghost Stories” features a freshly novel concept for framing an anthology, where the bookends aren’t just bookends, they ingeniously motivate each piece of the movie as more than a mere narrative device.  Philip’s collective journey has philosophical value as a reflection on life, death, and human perception of those two concepts.  For better or for worse, those themes don’t run terribly deep though.  Metaphors mostly evaporate as “Ghost Stories” creatively structures itself as a chilling thriller for delivering straightforward supernatural spooks.

The wraparound is the main attraction, and it’s where Dyson and Nyman’s screenplay shines.  Philip’s gumshoe work takes more than one dark turn.  Unexpected revelations around those corners keep the audience’s attention tuned to a uniquely crafted world where no possibility is off the table.  The best bits of fiction are saved exclusively for these sequences, with the film focusing on Philip practically to a fault.

The main narrative stays so satisfying, it’s a shame the three stories it surrounds don’t reflect the same inspired cleverness.  All three cases Philip investigates are forgettable save for what few breadcrumbs tie back to his arc.  Essentially, each of the shorts boils down to a vanilla variation on a lone man flinching at sounds in the darkness.

The first segment, “Tony Matthews,” sits its titular night watchman down for a great deal of unnecessary exposition occurring in both the past and the present.  When Tony finally gets up to investigate a power outage in the abandoned asylum where he works, all that sitting becomes a lot of hallway creeping as Tony repeatedly sweeps a flashlight beam across mannequin torsos before a ghost girl finally appears to an audio sting.

“Simon Rifkind” follows the same formula, merely trading the man for a boy and the apparition for a creature when a teenager becomes stranded in the woods.  As stale as the setup is, the segment stands out solely for Alex Lawther’s absolutely engrossing portrayal of the psychologically broken boy at its center.  “Black Mirror” fans will remember Lawther as a blackmailed masturbator in the “Shut Up and Dance” episode.  Lawther is even more pitiably disturbing here, nearly stealing the movie with his terrific performance, which is not an easy feat when Martin Freeman toplines the cast.

Speaking of Freeman, he similarly saves his segment through pure personality endearment. From man in building to man in forest, “Mike Priddle” brings us to man in house for another tame tale of a poltergeist knocking over knick knacks before a beast shouts boo so the piece can end on another jump scare.

Devil’s Advocate could argue that “Creepshow 2’s” memorable “The Hitchhiker” segment uses a simple setup too.  But the three stories nested inside “Ghost Stories” don’t have the energetic imagination to bump over the hump of being beige.

What disappoints most about the film’s inconsistent interior tales is that its exterior execution lays a foundation for “Ghost Stories” to have been a horror anthology all-timer.  If two, maybe even just one of the three shorts had sharper bite, we might be talking about the movie in those terms.  With what “Ghost Stories” does have on hand, it’s good for a one-time go, although once its secrets are out of the bag, substance lacks legs for longevity.

Review Score:  65

---