The line between comedy and horror has always been a thin one, and few in the last twenty years have proven that better than British comedy group, The League Of Gentlemen. Their macabre and often terrifying characters made them a cult sensation in the UK. While they never broke out beyond comedy experts in the U.S, you’ve likely seen some of their work since: Mark Gatiss, one of the quartet, went on to co-create “Sherlock,” while Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith are behind the terrific, similarly-toned series “Inside No. 9” (Pemberton also turned up in “Match Point,” and Shearsmith is a Ben Wheatley regular).
But there’s a fourth member, Jeremy Dyson, who’s in many ways lesser known than the others, in part because he was the only member to write, but not produce. Things have mostly been quiet from Dyson in recent years, but he’s very firmly back with the new film “Ghost Stories,” which he co-wrote and co-directed with Andy Nyman, an actor and magician who you might know from the likes of “Death At A Funeral” and “Peaky Blinders.” It again mixes comedy and horror, though the balance is very much tipped towards the latter, and with a little less success than the best of the League’s work.
The film is an adaptation of a stage play, also called “Ghost Stories”, which Dyson and Nyman created together. ‘Stories’ proved a smash hit a few years back, running for a total of two years in London’s West End. As with the stage version, Nyman also stars, as Professor Phillip Goodman, a professional debunker of psychics and other supernatural performers. He’s the star of his own TV show, “Psychic Frauds”, and he’s introduced in the documentary-style prologue exposing, with limited success, a trashy, exploitative medium (Nicholas Burns).
Soon, a mysterious tape puts him on the trail of his childhood paranormal-fakery-exposing hero Charles Cameron, who’s been missing for years. Cameron, when he finds him hiding out in a caravan park, appears to have been converted and become a believer in the supernatural, and challenges Goodman to take on three of his old cases and see if he doesn’t change his tune once he hears their stories.
So yeah, all of this proves to be something of a framing device for an old-fashioned, three-part anthology horror movie, a la “Dead Of Night” and “Creepshow”, with segments focusing on a night watchman in an abandoned prison (Brit comedy legend Paul Whitehouse, getting a deserved moment in the spotlight right now with this and “The Death Of Stalin”), an anxious teen in a borrowed car lost in the woods (Alex Lawther of “The Imitation Game” and “Black Mirror”), and an arrogant banker awaiting the birth of his child (Martin Freeman).
As a horror anthology, as a delivery device of different methods to utterly put the shits up you, the film is something of a triumph. The jump-scare is somewhat derided as a technique, but like a sort of ghost train ride, the movie makes a virtue of them, with at least a dozen well-executed moments that had us leaping in our seats. They wouldn’t be half as effective without the atmosphere that becomes before it, though, and Nyman and Dyson do a terrific job of setting an unsettling mood from the first frame (thanks in part to cinematographer Ole Bratt Birkeland and composer Haim Frank Ilfman, both doing strong work here).
Unlike some anthologies of a similar kind, the framing device is more than just a gimmick — there’s a bigger picture here that only gradually comes into view, something that turns the film into more than just a ride, but into a story of faith and skepticism. The substance is welcome, but doesn’t entirely sit with the third-act reveals, which are clever, but possibly a little too pleased with their own cleverness, particularly as they’re not breaking entirely new ground.
As ever with an anthology like this, there’s a certain unevenness. Whitehouse’s segment, which relies heavily on torchlight, is the most impressively executed and the most cinematic, but it ends in a bit of a damp squib. The Lawther section is the least successful: it sits a little incongruously with the others, with more of a Sam Raimi-ish tone to it (complete with wheelbarrow shot); while the actor’s enormously talented, his performance starts off in a state of feverish anxiety and never really deviates from that. Freeman gets to have the most fun (and screen time), but his story feels the least successfully expanded from the stage.
Dyson and Nyman’s status as first-time directors shows a little too: there’s sometimes a feeling that their choices are a little undisciplined (the shift from documentary in the opening into something more traditional is a bit hazy, and there’s a couple of naff gags later on), or that a more experienced horror helmer might have wringed more terror out of the setups. It’s also very much a boys’ club too: most of the women on screen are dead already.
But there’s still a lot of pleasure to be had here, whether from digging your fingernails into the armrest early on, to Freeman’s sly comic performance later. Dyson and Nyman might not have a smash the size of the stage version of “Ghost Stories” on their hands, but they’ve more than done it justice, and there’ll certainly be a willing, horror-friendly audience ready to jump out of their skins for this. [B-]
“Ghost Stories” premiered this week at the BFI London Film Festival. IFC Midnight will release the movie in the U.S. next year.
Click here for our complete coverage of the 2017 BFI London Film Festival