Review: Ghost Stories

Ghost Stories
Cert: 15 / 98 mins / Dir. Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman / Trailer



Well it's not often I get to walk out of a horror movie, excited by how much I loved it and just glad to be back in the light of the foyer. To do this twice in one week seems unheard of*¹.

Ghost Stories is an anthology-format feature film from Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson, adapted from their stage play of the same name. In it, Nyman plays Professor Phillip Goodman, a paranormal investigator who specialises in debunking claims of the supernatural and exposing charlatans on the 'stage medium' circuit. When he's called to a dilapidated caravan park in Yorkshire by Charles Cameron, a retired debunker and one of Phillip's similarly-minded idols, our hero is presented with three 'unsolved' cases. Speaking with the originators of each experience, Goodman slowly realises that something connects their inexplicable stories, and that link may be closer to home than he likes...

Now on paper, this should be a pretty standard affair. Although titled Ghost Stories, this is, make no bones about it, a horror film*². With segments taking place in an abandoned asylum and a car which breaks down in the woods at night, it's not so much that the film is 'textbook' in its approach, more that this is a lesson being taught with that textbook.

The nested storytelling is like an Inception of the macabre, beginning with urban decay, slamming doors and an escalating sense of suffocation. The third tale in Goodman's investigation goes to the windswept moors and a spacious, empty nursery, changing gears with unfettered agoraphobia, reminding the characters and audience alike that they're not safe anywhere*³.

Ghost Stories is, quite frankly, terrifying. Gleefully sadistic in its scares, even though it's a celebration of well-used mechanics in the genre. For the seasoned horror fan, the film acts as its own challenge to the cynical, as we become Goodman, the skeptic being preached to from all sides on the importance of belief, but still stubbornly waiting to be scared by the ride.

The roots as a stage-performance are evident throughout, but this adds to the intensity of the piece. Nyman and Dyson understand on a fundamental level that having someone hear strange noises in a derelict building isn't scary. Horror lies more in fear of the unknown than the reveal (which is why you generally don't show the monster in a first act), but to convey that sense of utter dread, the viewer needs to relate to the character experiencing it. Enter Paul Whitehouse and Alex Lawther, separately recounting their supernatural encounters and assuring the twitching audience that they'd fare no better in the same situations. The performances all-round are an acting masterclass. Martin Freeman is also in the film.

Each story seems to end without a definitive payoff (other than the knowledge that the teller of each tale survived to relay it to the interviewer), but it's all wrapped up in the finale. Ghost Stories' pulling together of the threads is magnificent. Again, there's little actual twist in 'the twist' if you're sitting second-guessing, but the storytelling follows the rules of the genre with absolute distinction.

These are the creative fruits of the tree watered with Hammer House of Horror and books that we were too scared to open*⁴. A movie which knows the key difference between telling its audience when to be frightened, and just frightening its audience.

Ghost Stories is masterful. As someone who has seen enough mediocre horror to have become thoroughly bored with the genre, I can give this no higher recommendation...

Tales Of The Unexpected, The League of Gentlemen and, oddly enough, Mindhorn.



It is.



All of the above.



It could well be.



We wouldn't disagree about this because you'll love it, too.
Won't you.



There isn't.



Level 1: That Canto Bight jail guard is in this.





*¹ I'm afraid I don't really categorise my reviews by genre, so it's more than the work of a few clicks to backtrack and find out, I'm afraid. As regular readers will be aware, I'm as harshly critical on horror as I am comedy (each having a very specific brief), so I know for a fact that me liking two horror flicks within the same half of a year is unusual, never mind in the same week... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Back in August, I told Mrs Blackout (who doesn't like horror movies) she'd love A Ghost Story as it's not a horror but an actual story about ghosts. Ghost Stories, on the other hand, is co-helmed by Jeremy Dyson, whose televisual and literary work she enjoys, yet she'd make it about seven minutes into this film before having to leave the room... ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Speaking of the audience, there was an advert for Taylor Swift's UK stadium tour in front of this film. That's not an unusual type of product in itself, but there's normally some broad demographic link (a similar promo ran for N*ckleback in front of The Huntsman) - that's generally how advertising works. But the Taylor Swift advert didn't run before A Wrinkle In Time on the same day. Who do the film distributors think is watching Ghost Stories, exactly? ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ But kept opening anyway... ^{[ BACK ]}


DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Star Wars - The Last Jedi (seventh-pass)

Star Wars: The Last Jedi (seventh-pass / 2D / SPOILERS!)
Cert: 12A / 152 mins / Dir. Rian Johnson / Trailer


Previous reviews: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

Okay, I've touched on this in an earlier review, but the more I watch The Last Jedi, the less I'm buying this thing about Rey's parents being drunk/junk-traders*¹. The whole issue surrounding our heroine's lineage is focused on so much in this film that the brush-off of 'they're nothing / you're nothing' just screams of Ben Solo's wrong-headedness. And as I've also gone into previously, most of the central characters in The Last Jedi are pretty much wrong, pretty much most of the time.

Especially Ben Solo.

Now, more than ever, it is my belief that Rey is the daughter of Han Solo and Leia Organa. Previously hidden to keep her out of harm's way, fate has intervened (as it so often does in the GFFA) and reunited Rey with the ones she's destined to protect. And/or destroy. Often interchangeable in this timeline. My full list of character-foundations for Rey's lineage is in this Force Awakens review from last year, but I'll take a moment to reiterate these points in the earlier film:

26m30s: The opening notes of Luke & Leia's Theme from Return Of The Jedi play here.
Before we've met Luke in the film, before we've met Leia.



41m46s The opening notes of Luke & Leia's Theme from Return Of The Jedi play here. Again.
We're on the Falcon, but it's before we've met Luke in the film, before we've met Leia.
The score then goes into Rey's own theme immediately afterwards.

Now although my points so far would seem to suggest that Rey is the child of Luke or Leia (do be quiet at the back), I think it's notable that John Williams used this sequence with the new heroine, rather than just the Force Theme. Anyhow, there's another tie to the Princess…

1h57m02s: And we get a full-on Han Solo & The Princess motif in this scene, heavily suggesting that Rey might have something in common with the pair of them.

So, according to my internal-logic (no, don't laugh), unless Leia had a relationship with someone else around twenty years before the events of TFA/TLJ (unlikely since Solo only appears to have left the scene once Ben starting wearing a silly hat; ten years ago at most, according to the TLJ's Jedi Temple flashbacks), then it stands to reason that Han would be her father. Again, plenty of reasons for that in my previous post.

But that's all in the past, of course. What does The Last Jedi have to bring to this party? Well, in the scene on Luke's hideaway planet, Ahch-To, where Rey skips off at night to investigate the Seaweed-Encrusted Dark Side Well and kneels down to look into the aperture, we get a very brief first-couple-of-notes of either Han Solo & The Princess (as above), or Princess Leia's Theme, both of which point in the aforementioned direction (and for obvious reasons I have neither a time-code nor screenshot of this point in the film).

But surely, Ben's revelation that Rey's parents were lying in a pauper's grave in the Jakku desert holds some new revelation, no? Not really, no. Because when Ben and Rey touched hands through their Force-Time connection, Rey claims she saw Ben's future and that turned out to be… well, momentarily accurate albeit wildly open to interpretation. And Ben's already a great source of reasoned balance, truth and wisdom, given that his recollection of that night Luke Skywalker confronted him is notably different from both of Luke's re-tellings. Ben Solo can't be trusted to relay his own past, never mind provide insight into anyone else's. And this is before we factor in that the whole Force connection was orchestrated by Snoke. ie, the one guy who showed them both exactly what Snoke knew would bait them into action.

No, Ben Solo knows for sure who Rey's parents are in the same way that he confronts Luke Skywalker, not noticing that the blue lightsaber his former master ignites is the same one Ben himself helped to tear apart twenty-five minutes earlier. Ben is the unreliable narrator.

Back at the tail-end of the prequel trilogy, Luke and Leia were separated for their protection. And while I realise they aren't twins, a sibling relationship - direct descendants of the Skywalker bloodline - would account for Ben and Rey's pre-existing connection and unconscious familiarity. This would be precisely what the Organa-Solos were trying to avoid by hiding Rey (although why this would have occurred 8-10 years before Ben went bad is open to speculation). Han didn't get round to telling Rey the truth before he died, instead offering her a place on the family ship she'd already bonded with. By the time Rey returned to the Resistance base on D'Qar, she already knew enough about the troubled Ben/Han/Leia relationship that Leia didn't feel she could burden the girl with more responsibility. Instead she sends Rey off to uncover Luke, the training with her uncle hopefully being the ideal precursor to a family reunion further down the line. For Rey to know of her sibling in the meanwhile would compromise any action she had to take against him, and is something Ben would thoroughly exploit, in turn.

And for the record I don't think Luke knew about Rey's identity, certainly not until he reconnected with the Force at any rate. Although Yoda's conversation with Luke by the fire seems to be an unspoken 'there is another' moment. Yoda knew she'd taken the books off-planet, after all, his knowledge is greater than the sum of his dialogue.

The most telling thing is that the whole situation still isn't resolved, one more movie down the line. We'll see what Episode IX brings. In the meanwhile, if you needed it all spelling out any more clearly…

I'd love to be proved wrong about all this. But having Ben Solo garble some hot-take on a deliberately obscure vision he's been fed isn't settling anything…

The Star Wars.



Yes.



Yes.



It's strong.
It's very strong.



That all depends on how wrong you are.



There is.



Level 0: It is Star Wars.





*¹ In my mind, Drunk, Junk Traders is a daytime TV programme which airs the Galaxy Far, Far Away, more than likely hosted by Dom Littlewood. It's what Luke's been watching all these years in exile because the island caretakers love it. No wonder the man's grumpy. ^{[ BACK ]}

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.