I have been waiting to see this movie for months, ever since I first saw the trailer for it late last year. A British horror movie from one of the same people behind the TV show The League of Gentlemen? That from the very first trailer promises to mess with our perceptions? Not to mention all the reviews from people who saw it at the festivals and conventions before it got a wide release who couldn't say enough good things about it. My only fear was that Ghost Stories would fall into the same pit as so many other films I want to see at the cinema but never make it to my local multiplex, but for once the gods smiled upon me and it came out this week. So now to see if my anticipation will be rewarded or crushed underfoot.
Professor Philip Goodman is a sceptical parapsychologist who makes his living debunking paranormal phenomena and exposing fake psychics. He is contacted by Charles Cameron, another parapsychologist who disappeared some years previously, who challenges Goodman with three cases that Cameron claims he cannot explain away. So Goodman goes investigating them, thinking he can easily find rational explanations for all of them, but each case is more bizarre than the last. From ghostly encounters in old warehouses to strange creatures in the woods at night to an apparent poltergeist and a monstrous baby, Goodman finds that things are getting more and more confusing, and reality starts to blur for him as he himself starts to see and experience apparently supernatural events. How are these three cases connected and what is Charles Cameron's ultimate goal in trying to make Goodman investigate them - and what is happening to Goodman's world?
Hmm. It's been several hours since I saw Ghost Stories now, and I'm still not sure how I feel about the ending. And I can't even explain here why I'm feeling conflicted, as to do so would be a pretty big spoiler and I'm not going to do that to anyone who wants to see the film themselves. Then again, I'd also definitely recommend Ghost Stories to everyone as it's a very good film, so I guess I'm okay with the ending being what it was. The only thing I'll say about it is that the film likes to mess with your perceptions - hell, it admits that in the trailer and with its tagline of, "The brain sees what it wants to see."
The atmosphere that Ghost Stories creates is by far its biggest achievement. The three stories Goodman investigates are pretty simple in terms of ghost stories - there's the haunted warehouse, the strange goat-like creature on the country road, and the poltergeist - but its the way they're told to us that ratchets up the tension to almost unbearable levels in places. Yes, there are jump scares, but they're organic jump-scares - they flow with the pace of the story and don't feel like they've been shoehorned in for a cheap scare. There's plenty of scares that aren't jump-scares as well - shadowy figures standing just out of focus in the background, lights turning off one by one to leave a hapless night watchman in total darkness, and a plethora of strange coincidences that you start to notice more and more as the film progresses, cluing the audience into the fact that there's more going on here than is on the surface - but what is it? At one point I spent about a minute being terrified of what seemed to be a one-eyed creature peering through a car window... before realising that it was actually the front passenger seat headrest shot slightly out of focus. That's what Ghost Stories' playing around with perception did to me.
There are quite a few references to past horror classics in the film as well - the Hammer Horrors are probably the most important as they probably provided a lot of the influence that went into this film, but I also spotted a quite beautiful homage to The Evil Dead at one point, and there's also the odd nod to Poltergeist and the story of the Enfield Poltergeist as well, among others. Clearly, Ghost Stories was a labour of love for its creators, both in the film version and its original theatrical version. And as for the ending? Well, it all fits together with the events of the film, at least, and is its own brand of horror. The best I can say is that it's going to divide audiences, but it's still more than worth seeing the film to find out whether you love or hate the ending yourself.