Ghost Stories Review (Film, 2018)
Content warning: gore, mental wellness, suicide
It’s not the most popular opinion, but I love it when stage plays get adapted to film. There are productions that most of the world will never have a chance to see that suddenly have an accessible platform for anyone who is interested. They don’t always translate as great cinema, but at least you get a chance to experience the ideas, characters, and (hopefully) the dialogue.
Ghost Stories is the rare stage play adapted to film by the original playwrights. Directors/screenwriters Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman adapt their own stage play into a feature length film and it works beautifully. The entire conceit of the play is very cinematic, an 80 minute horror show with jump scares and projected images riffing on that signature William Castle B-movie style.
Professor Goodman (Andy Nyman recreating his role onstage to wonderful effect) is a paranormal researcher with a popular TV show debunking hauntings, sightings, and straight up scam artists. He is contacted by his childhood hero Charles Cameron, the most famous paranormal researcher in history, to investigate three supernatural cases that Cameron himself could not debunk. The three witnesses get to tell their stories, and Goodman is quick to point out logical explanations. What he can’t rationalize is the increasing frequency at which he himself starts seeing visions of mysterious figures lurking in the shadows and following him.
On stage, Ghost Stories has four characters: Goodman and the three witnesses. The witnesses tell their story as part of Goodman’s research. Ghost Stories is also one of the few successful plays that requests audiences do not reveal the secrets of what they’ve seen or read, and I am always willing to accommodate that request. Suffice it to say I found the script quite terrifying when I read and the people I know who saw the productions in London or Australia all say it is the scariest play they’ve ever seen in their lives. We’re talking professional haunted house level scares in a stageplay when you don’t get to walk away.
Dyson and Nyman wisely expand the cast to include more characters. Charles Cameron, for example, is a device created for the film to make the presentation more cinematic. Characters referenced along the way—a priest, someone’s parents, a fraudulent TV psychic—are seen and participate in the story, expanding the world in a way that feels natural to the story.
Even better, Ghost Stories now functions as an anthology horror film in that Amicus style. Amicus anthologies always had a framing narrative. The framing story is a complete story in itself and usually acts as a vehicle to open doors to other stories along the way. Those stories may or may not impact the framing narrative, but the stories could not be told without the framing narrative there to introduce them. Professor Goodman is researching three very different cases of supernatural activities, and we get to witness those stories come to life in tremendous fashion.
Ghost Stories is referential by design. Dyson and Nyman have explained how they wanted to write a scary play and started by picking out their favorite scary scenes in horror cinema. They then took the mechanics of those scenes and found clever ways to make them work in their own original stories. We’ve all seen the Don’t Look Now gag of finding who you’re looking for only for the that unmasking to reveal an inanimate object; it’s part of horror DNA at this point. Dyson and Nyman will take that concept not as the peak of a scare but the first layer of a whole new kind of horror spun from a well loved visual cue.
It’s unfair to call the dialogue in Ghost Stories hit or miss. The screenplay is written with great precision and has intentional style shifts to better ease into the different tones of the three witnesses’ stories. What I will say is that the second story is performed in a very theatrical way that feels less authentic than the rest of the film. The third story has lines that feel just a bit too clever and referential to the structure of a horror story compared to the more natural dialogue before and after. Again, there are strong reasons for all of this that pay out later, but I could see a viewer less familiar with the concept of the story being thrown out of the story by these big style swings.
The highlight of the film for me is the first story. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt a genuine sense of dread and discomfort from a traditional cinematic ghost story. That first witness’ story had me move away from the screen and want to leave the room from the level of tension built by the brilliant editing, acting, and sound design. It’s a perfect slow burn paranormal story that betrays your expectations with something genuinely clever before it even reaches the end.
The other two witness stories weren’t as effective for me, though they are still well made and serve the overriding vision of Ghost Stories. I think the need to set up the second story in a more cinematic way really undercut the impact of the turn in the story. It’s very well made with great design elements, especially the lighting, but it didn’t surprise me like the first. The Visual language of the framing device combined with the broader, perhaps more stage appropriate, performance of anxiety gives away a little too much too soon.
The third story is crucial to intentions of Ghost Stories as a film. It’s not as complete a narrative by design and features great moments of misdirection and straight up avoidance in its presentation. The acting and technical effects are excellent. The scares aren’t as transformative of their references to more American haunted house stories like Poltergeist, though again, that could be because Poltergeist and more aggressive paranormal stories made a larger mark on the cinema landscape of America than the UK. The execution is seamless and it still works. The story accomplishes what it needs to for the film, even if that itself is not as complete a narrative as the other two witness stories.
Ghost Stories is a unique horror film. It’s an anthology horror film where the framing narrative is critical to the overall experience. It is also a stage adaptation of a horror play (a rarity in itself) that feels incredibly cinematic in its approach. Most important of all, it’s the rare horror film that does referential scares well. You can’t just take a gag from another film and expect it to work. You have to mold the form into something that fits in your story and works for your story. Ghost Stories works because Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman put great thought into every detail throughout the process of creating this story for stage and screen.
Ghost Stories is currently streaming on Hulu.
***
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