Released: April 6, 2018
Director: Andy Nyman & Jeremy Dyson
Screenplay: Andy Nyman & Jeremy Dyson
Tagline: "Be careful what you believe in"
Cast:
Andy Nyman as Professor Phillip Goodman
Martin Freeman as Mike Priddle
Alex Lawther as Simon Rifkind
Paul Whitehouse as Tony Matthews
Nicholas Burns as Mark Van Rhys
Jill Halfpenny as Peggy Vann Rhys
Phillip Goodman has built a career on rationalizing the paranormal, debunking psychics, and outing fraudulent ghost hunters. He sees himself as an altruistic martyr that elevates the truth and shuts down scam artists and liars, but he's about to discover it's not so black and white. After receiving a mysterious summons from his professional hero, Charles Cameron, Goodman is tasked with uncovering the truth behind three cases that Cameron was never able to explain. He needs Goodman to denounce any supernatural elements once and for all or he won't be able to go to his grave in peace.
The three cases become the bulk of the film, each one explored in a mini-movie with intense, frightening flashbacks as the afflicted tell their tales to the skeptical Goodman. There's some great, expert cinematography at work in these sequences. Combined with an unrelenting, thrilling score, Nyman and Dyson fashion a pitch-perfect atmosphere of dread that produces maddening levels of tension. For all of the grandiose technicalities that produce an elegant film, Ghost Stories is also legitimately scary at several points, with everyone working hard to deliver on the strange, surprising turns called for by the script. Freeman, in particular, seems to be having a blast with his wild, catch-all role.
The framing device is also more interesting and engaging than most in horror anthologies and elevates each of the tales, which work on their own as effective, scary yarns, to something grander. The overall film becomes an examination of fear, its origins in our personal history and its deep roots in our psychological makeup. It also forces us to question why we wish so desperately for the world to function in clear binaries, and the fierce denial we adopt when confronted with evidence that it does not work that way. The film plays with expectation, instinct, and human emotion and does it all with a clever knack for terror. It's wicked, fun, and well worth your time. Go get surprised.
Ghost Stories
5 - Totally Terrifying
4 - Crazy Creepy
3 - Fairly Frightening
2 - Slightly Scary
1 - Hardly Horror
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