Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

“Most contemporary films leave me cold”: Interview with director Alex Bakshaev

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

A few years ago, the site (in its old incarnation) was approached with an indie film which looked decidedly different to most films we receive; this turned out to be abundantly and delightfully the case. Whilst we do get a fair range of styles and genres, The Devil of Kreuzberg was a revelation: it’s rather unusual for directors to reference the Gothic so heavily in their publicity these days, but Alex Bakshaev did just that, and the film delivered – with a Europhile approach which really could have been a lost reel from the 1970s. After reviewing Alex’s second film (S&M: Les Sadiques) recently, I decided I had to ask this filmmaker about his very distinctive style and approach.

Warped Perspective: Hi, Alex – thank you for talking to us! The first thing I want to ask you relates to probably the most self-evident feature of your work: your filmmaking style is very unusual when compared with most of the indie cinema we receive. Is this a deliberate decision on your part – to sidestep the zeitgeist?

Alex Bakshaev: I try to make the kind of films that I myself would enjoy watching. Unfortunately, most contemporary films leave me cold. That’s why I hardly ever go to the cinema anymore (unless it’s a midnight screening of some classic). So yeah, perhaps I’m influenced by older films to a greater extent than other contemporary indie filmmakers. 

WP:You are openly influenced by directors such as Jean Rollin (The Devil of Kreuzberg seems very Rollin to me) and of course Jess Franco, who is clearly an inspiration for Les Sadiques. Tell me a little about your influences, and how you got into these directors’ work. Do you have favourite films in mind, which impact upon your own films? 

AB: Oh, Jean Rollin was a revelation! I’d read a review of Grapes of Death on some website, around 2002. The screenshots looked promising, so I got me a bootleg copy on VHS and loved it. Grapes of Death and Night of the Hunted are my favourite Rollin films. The Iron Rose is another important film. It doesn’t really work as a narrative, but you can learn so much about cinematography from that unique work.

While I embraced Rollin instantly, getting into Franco took a while longer. I can’t quite remember which my very first Jess Franco experience was. It was around the same time as Jean Rollin, again on pirate VHS. It may have been Mari-Cookie and the Killer Tarantula (1998), or Cannibals(1980) with Al Cliver. Neither one is an easy film for a newcomer! It took me some three-four years of frustration to ‘get’ Franco’s cinema. I really started appreciating and obsessing over his work after having seen Exorcism (1974) and Eugenie De Sade (1971) with Soledad Miranda. These films have resonated with me, and have also prompted me to try my hand at more erotic themes. I’ve had the idea of making a film along the lines of Eugenie de Sade for a number of years.  I got the opportunity to make that happen in 2016 with S&M: Les Sadiques. My original screenplay was even more closely modelled on Franco’s film, but got altered down the road due to budget restrictions. So yes, my films are very influenced by Rollin and Franco.

WP: How do you create your distinctive atmosphere on screen? I know that you work on a tight budget, your second film even more than your first, but you achieve a great deal with the resources available to you. How tricky is it to do this?

AB: These days I’m more and more drawn to music as a means of storytelling. If you cut the excessively talky scenes and make sure the score and the images bounce off each other, it’s hard to mess up the rest too badly. These are the lessons I’ve learned from Don Coscarelli, Jean Rollin, Jess Franco, Lucio Fulci and my other idols.

WP: You have so far used very strong female characters in your films, in particular Sandra Bourdonnec, who works brilliantly well in both of your films. Was this a deliberate decision? How difficult or easy has it been to recruit the right actors for the roles? 

AB: Yes, it’s been a deliberate tactic on my part. Many potentially amazing films have been ruined due to female characters being represented as not having a will of their own, subordinate to males. No amount of beautiful editing or plot twists can atone for that. So in my own work I’m going in the opposite direction, with often un-heroic males and bold, superior females. As for recruiting the actors, this has been down to blind luck. I don’t have the money or clout to pick and choose, to organize proper castings. So I take chances. In some cases, I’ve had amazing luck with actors; in others, less so.

WP: What have you learned so far about getting your films made, which you wish you had known at the start?

AB: The main thing I’ve learned is that I have no clue how to make films! No matter how well-prepared I ever thought I was, it was not nearly enough. Neither did I realise just how saturated the market is! There are more no-budget films out there than there are viewers. So, in a way, ignorance is bliss. Had I been aware of this beforehand, I would have been too intimidated to ever venture into filmmaking. I enjoy every aspect of the filmmaking process. I tend to either carry out the writing, camera and editing duties myself or supervise them very closely. So I do learn a lot of technical stuff on every film, but it’s not nearly enough. I’m still learning!

 WP: And finally, what are your aspirations for the future? Do you have any plans for future films at present?

I don’t have any new films planned right now [Keri starts trying to subliminally influence Alex to make a new version of Venus in Furs…]

WP: That’s a shame, but I very much hope that changes in future. Thank you so much for your time, Alex!

AB: Thanks a lot for giving me the chance to talk about my work, Keri!

 

“Men sometimes have strange motives”: Witchfinder General at 50

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Times of great uncertainty and bloodshed have always seemed to bolster paranoia and irrational thought. Change offers to dispose of the unconscionable practices of the past, but even as old beliefs and practices are on the verge of being swept away, people still to seek them out, retreating into watchful suggestibility any time the pace of change progresses too quickly. You might like to name any number of examples from history, but in terms of the English Civil War – which provides our context here – a countrywide dispute over governance, supported by new warfare and weaponry, continued to cast a long shadow, and people did not simply forget what had gone before; far from it. Suspicions over one’s neighbours were still framed by supernatural suspicions, or at least framed in compelling supernatural language; in a similar way to today, where people gloss over the complex, uncomfortable truths to look instead for clues about conspiracies, the people of the mid-17th Century accused one another of witchcraft. Discerning opportunists, like the ‘Witchfinder General’, Matthew Hopkins, were all too willing to exploit this.

Hopkins, a notorious figure in his own lifetime, successfully combined the contemporary spirit of enterprise with the old beliefs in pacts with the devil, turning a lucrative trade with a regimented programme which extracted confessions of witchcraft. Little is known of his origins, save where he was born and to whom, but as the son of a Puritan minister he may well have been a believer in the power of Satan to mislead and menace (albeit it’s always seemed odd that Old Scratch did so in such typically low-key ways). But, if Hopkins was pious enough to believe in witchcraft, then he was not such a Christian when it came to poverty and charity, and detecting witches – often with sadistic methods – was a real money-spinner for him. Hopkins was not idle, and he was not cheap. He executed more witches during his brief career than England had dispatched in the previous 160 years, and demanded so much money for doing so that he cost a single town over £3000 in modern money in ‘costs’. Whilst his rapidly-generated wealth couldn’t insulate him from illness and premature death (it’s believed he was dead of tuberculosis by 30), it’s clear to see why his short, hectic career has proved a source of inspiration for literature – and film. In 1968, based on a novel by Ronald Bassett, director Michael Reeves and the head of Tigon Films, Tony Tenser, worked together on a screenplay and script. After a protracted battle with the BBFC over the film’s ‘sadism’, shooting began in England in the autumn. This was itself the start of a turbulent and uneasy process, but the end result has given us one of the seminal horror films of the twentieth century.

“You took him from me!”

The plot sticks with the turmoil of civil war for its context, and presents us the implications of witch-hunting in microcosm, focusing largely on how the arrival of the now-named Witchfinder General impacts upon one family. Hopkins (Vincent Price) and his assistant Stearne (Robert Russell) are moving from place to place in the English countryside, fuelling intolerance and aggression as they go; meanwhile, a roundhead soldier named Richard Marshall (Ian Ogilvy) is all too aware of the potential risk of Hopkins’ presence, and struggles to balance his duties as a soldier against his desire to keep his fiancée Sarah (Hilary Dwyer) safe from harm. He is utterly unable to do this, ultimately, and finds himself mired in a bitter power struggle against Stearne and Hopkins, vowing vengeance against Hopkins for the torments he goes on to inflict against Sarah and her father.

This, as a plot synopsis, looks oddly thin on the page – but the film’s all-encompassing atmosphere, together with its sense of dread purpose and inescapability, fleshes out its storyline to an unbearable point. Those drab, indifferent landscapes and the marching lines of men all seem to crowd inwards as the plot progresses, whilst the systematic dismantling of the happy future Marshall once anticipated has the power to engender great anger. Ogilvy’s rage that he cannot fully sate his desire for bloody revenge upon Hopkins calls oddly to our sympathy as an audience; he is frozen forever in his moment of supreme frustration, and whilst we do not see what happens to him next, the way in which he is overwhelmed by bigger social and political forces confronts us with the distasteful impression that all rebellion is ineffectual. The young man’s life is effectively over at that moment; we leave the story to the soundtrack of one of the great cinematic screams.

The troubled making of the film is as notorious as the events of the film itself, and much has been made of Michael Reeves’ fury at the studio pressure which forced him to cast Vincent Price in his lead role. It’s well-documented that he was rude and dismissive of Price, whilst Price remembered the experience of making Witchfinder General as the only time he ever really clashed with a director. I can see why Reeves was wary of casting Price, as he was hardly known for the type of film which the younger man was setting out to make, though some of the heated exchanges between them are hardly defensible – but Price’s acknowledged disillusionment with the film lends him a miserable gravitas in-role which is note-perfect. Many of the film’s sinister attributes come directly from Vincent Price’s performance, although the supporting cast are superb. I also feel that the casting of a much older man than the real Hopkins would have been works to the film’s advantage. Price is able to bring a rather jaded, menacing presence to the film, and he acts as a perfect foil for Ogilvy, the young career soldier. The two men are the embodiment of the old and the new, and on screen, the effect is mesmerising. Price himself, once safely back in the California sunshine, was able to acknowledge that Witchfinder General’s troubled birth had in fact led to one of his best-ever performances, and, ever the gentleman, he wrote to Reeves to say so.

“Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips” – the influence and legacy of the film

Perhaps predictably, the film was decried for its gruesome “sadism” upon release, even though many of the bloodier elements had been rinsed from the screenplay at the BBFC’s behest before filming even took place. It’s always strange to consider those people who are outraged by the inclusion of grisly scenes which perfectly match the subject matter (and have usually been cleaned up considerably; I’d imagine the real battle of Naseby was worse than anything Reeves could have got on screen). As with the recent, predictable flounce-outs from the new Lars von Trier film in Cannes, you wonder what on earth people expect, or why they go to see anything which they must guess won’t be at all to their tastes.

Longer term, however, audiences began to re-assess, identifying the strengths and the bold decisions, eventually seeing Witchfinder General for the striking, innovative addition to the horror canon which it is. This has taken time, but its reputation is now cemented, and it’s often included on lists of the best horror films of all time. Funnily though, one of its earliest successes was to reinvigorate Edgar Allan Poe as a source of cinematic inspiration, despite Reeves’ original screenplay having nothing to do with Poe whatsoever. AIP, who had part-budgeted the film (and insisted on their most bankable star getting the lead role) re-released it in the US under a different title, ‘The Conqueror Worm’, which is a line from a Poe verse which the author embedded into one of his short stories, Ligeia. To justify the rebrand, the new version of the film was bookended by verses from the poem, though there were no other additions. This new title hardly set the world ablaze on its release, but overall, Reeves’ film led to a minor resurgence in Poe adaptations, including The Oblong Box: it’s not as gaudy or glorious as The Masque of the Red Death, but it’s certainly worthwhile.

In terms of an English cinematic legacy, Witchfinder General has come to be widely-credited for its influence on what’s now broadly referred to as ‘folk horror’: this is a very broad church overall, but one which often derives its terrors from landscape, seclusion and the pesky resurgence of old gods. Whilst Witchfinder General’s relationship with the supernatural is rather minimal, positioning its witchcraft as a bludgeoning tool of exploitation and repression used by the powerful, its trials and burnings take place in a rural 17th century setting which seems primed for sinister events, offering contrast and incongruity whilst exploring a period in time when fervent Christian belief was meant to be at its apex. If the society of Witchfinder General needlessly burned its witches, then Blood on Satan’s Claw, with its slightly later setting, goes a step further by ploughing up a real devil for people to worship. The thread of sinister communities and historical unreason started in 1968, travelled to Europe in films such as Mark of the Devil, and in the years since, a resurgent interest in these folk horrors has led to modern-day films like A Field in England (2013), also set during the English Civil War. Its characters could almost be contemporary with the characters in Michael Reeves’ film.

Hopkins has even made his way into pop culture, from Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens to TV comedy (via an affectionate pastiche called Scream Satan Scream! in Doctor Terrible’s House of Horrible) and even music: the genre of doom metal has an especial soft spot for the ol’ Witchfinder, naming bands, EPs and songs for him. Many metal fans first heard Vincent Price speak as Hopkins in a certain Cathedral song, years before they actually saw the film…

It’s a shame, or at least I personally think it is, that we never got to see Udo Kier playing Hopkins in his redacted scenes from Rob Zombie’s Lords of Salem – but, now that director Nicolas Winding Refn has purchased the rights to Witchfinder General, we may in future see a new incarnation of Hopkins which is a long way from what Reeves ever envisioned (and no doubt a long way from anything Zombie/Kier had in mind, either). We can be cautiously optimistic about any future developments from Refn, I think, as he’s a talented, distinctive filmmaker who would respect the film’s legacy. But until then, fifty years after its inception, Witchfinder General remains a singularly English chapter in horror. It’s brutal, it’s influential, and in overarching meanness of spirit, it’s a horror film which is still quite unparalleled today.

Devil’s Advocates: The Shining by Laura Mee

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Whatever the situation was immediately following its release, no single horror film in history seems to have attracted such a proliferating amount of critical commentary as The Shining. And, few films have lent themselves to so much of what many lay viewers would see as frankly barmy analysis; okay, if you’ve ever watched a certain documentary called Room 237, then you’ll know exactly what I mean, and afterwards you might have felt less that you’ve been asked to consider various ‘explanations’ of the film and more that you’ve been up close and personal with delusion. Still, The Shining is a film which can withstand a certain amount of this kind of thing, and if it can sustain being reinterpreted as a metaphor about the Greek myth of the labyrinth with Jack as the Minotaur, then it can handle being critically reinterpreted in a broader sense, as part of the ongoing Devil’s Advocates series. I’ve reviewed several of these titles before: overall, these books strike a good, readable balance between academia and general interest, albeit that academic studies often tread some familiar paths in their analyses. Here, author Laura Mee is up for the task of assessing and discussing this landmark horror film, though one which has often been seen as a cold imposter to the genre, and remains a contested piece of work.

A neat synopsis of the film is straight away linked to the film’s peculiar qualities, in particular the deep sense of unease it often generates. This unease is one of the film’s most striking features, and it is created in a range of diverse ways, though the book starts with the most obvious building-blocks: the colour palette, the interiors and the distinctive camerawork, for example. Adding further detail about the project’s background, Mee elaborates on the interesting process behind Kubrick choosing to adapt the original novel, and the ways that, almost from the first moments, this led to issues for the director.

By electing to make a horror film, Kubrick began to labour under a dual weight of expectations – the heavy burden of auteur theory on one hand, and presuppositions about what constitutes a horror film on the other. As a director whose diverse work had already attracted critical interest and a reputation for lofty symbolism, amongst other things, there was a certain discouraging babble around his decision to make The Shining, a project which didn’t at first seem to reward viewers in a straightforward way. (Earlier on in the book, Mee also mentions a number of academic film writers who have had difficulties with the content of The Shining, though bearing in mind that this difficulty is not typically shared by fans.) If this book has one key strength, then it’s how the author successfully defends Kubrick’s vision – not as something frustrated by outside forces or in any ways a misfire, but as a very deliberately constructed story, sustaining its elements of the Uncanny, black humour, garish aesthetics and overblown characterisation to artful effect.

In order to do this, Mee also spends time rebuffing a few of the main rumours that continue to swirl around with regards to Stephen King, author of The Shining (novel), and vocal, documented critic of Kubrick’s adaptation. Now, given the way that today’s Stephen King devotes so much time online to criticising everything and anything he dislikes, it seems less of a big deal; however, his complaints about Kubrick’s film are notorious, and have long been potentially damaging: can there be anything worse than having the originator of the story disown your version?

Not only does Mee debunk a lot of King’s strident criticisms of the film by offering recorded evidence which suggests that he, at least initially, really liked the film, but she goes deeper than this and makes an excellent case for judging an adaptation as far as possible on its own merits, rather than seeing it as ‘too different’ from the source material. There’s a fascinating section on what was left out between novel and screenplay and why, with supporting material from Kubrick’s own notebooks. It also seems relevant to note that Kubrick was not the first nor the last to omit or limit King’s more insalubrious sexual content from his screenplay, and for good reason: IT (2017) also springs to mind here. Ultimately, the films are not the books, and it is successfully argued here that transformative decisions are made for good reasons.

Other sections of the book opt for a more tried-and-tested approach and analyse the themes and plot of the film along the lines of viewing the film, variously, as an assault on family, a study of misogyny, and a comment on white racism. It’s usually here that I find myself feeling more and more detached from academic analysis of this kind, and I feel that aspects of this will always alienate non-academic readers to an extent; sure, film studies is always going to be refracted through the social mores of its time, and I do think there are interesting discussions to be had (and are had here) about, say, the family dynamic in the film, but positioning Jack as a “white supremacist” (p.73) because he kills Halloran seems achingly moot. Particularly in a horror film where the embodiment of white, cis-hetero male privilege loses all of his own volition and freezes to death in a maze; it’d be fairly easy to invert a lot of this kind of critique, but no one ever seems to want to…

Still, my gripes with the Devil’s Advocates series so far have been minor, and this is also a minor gripe – the above critical commentary makes up only a small share in what is otherwise a neat, well-researched and accessible text, as well as an enjoyable defence of Kubrick’s skills in adaptation and horror storytelling.

She Came From the Woods (2017): Interview with Director Erik Bloomquist

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

We receive quite a lot of short films overall at the site, and it’s always fun seeing what kind of a calling-card filmmakers have on offer: better still is when films channel formative horror and nostalgia along the way, which is the case with She Came From The Woods (2017).

We took a look at the film, and chatted to director Erik Bloomquist.

The film goes like this: it’s a warm summer’s night, and a group of summer camp counsellors are doing what countless young people do in these kinds of situations, aside from flirting and carbonising marshmallow: they’re sitting around a campfire, scaring the bejeezus out of one another with scary stories about alleged nefarious goings-on. For the little gathering in She Came From the Woods (2017), the urban myth of choice is about a nurse, Esther, who was – ahem – ‘relieved of her duties’ because of her oddball behaviour, but is now apparently holed up in THESE VERY WOODS, albeit on the astral plane – until such time as some foolhardy teenagers decide to summon her. Her post-mortem interest in ritual and mutilation gives her a keen interest in getting this kind of invite, and calling up Esther is apparently all too easy…

Uh-oh. That sounds like a horror film waiting to happen.

‘Summer camp’ has never really taken off in the UK, probably because the weather rarely obliges for that long and summer in a tent in Britain is a horror all of its own, but nonetheless we do have our own versions of urban myths and legends, and people always enjoy sharing these ‘friend of a friend’ creepy stories. In my day, it was ‘Bloody Mary’, and I remember as a child daring one another to call her name in front of a mirror – though it turns out she was actually quite shy, and never put in an appearance. Although the build-up to the denouement in She Came From The Woods is surprisingly leisurely for a twelve-minute film, I’m sure it’s not a spoiler to say that the camp counsellors here get more out of Esther than we ever got out of Bloody Mary – although I do feel that what we see is tantalising, rather than a full pay-off, so if this film could in any way be seen as a calling-card for the introduction of this character, then I’d certainly be happy to find out more.

There’s a lot to explore here. With its mix of gore and ritual, splicing a few horror staples together, She Came From the Woods is a fun meld of a whole host of ideas, from witchcraft to bad science to straight-up splatter. If it resembles anything, then for me it would be the Tales From the Crypt comics, with their rising tension balanced against a light-touch script and plenty of gross-out Americana. It’s fun, and it points to a love of the kinds of teen-orientated horror which have been with us for decades now.

So, having seen the film itself, we thought we’d ask a few things…

WP: Firstly, tell us how the idea for the film came about. How long did it take you to get a screenplay together and what was that process like? 

Erik Bloomquist: We were very fortunate to have access to this incredible summer camp location that really feels like it transports you back in time. We were really inspired by that location, both logistically and creatively, in terms of plot and tone.

WP: The film seems to be playing with ideas from childhood/teen horrors and pastimes. Would that be correct? What drew you to these ideas?

EB: Carson and I grew up watching Are You Afraid of the Dark? on Nickelodeon, so we like to think of this as almost a grown-up episode of that show. There’s something very exciting about the boundlessness of a legend and a good old fashioned campfire story.

WP: Is the film and its mythos intended to stay a short, or is the story-line one you’d like to revisit at any point in future? I have to say, it feels like it could be expanded into a longer story…

EB: We’re definitely exploring a feature adaptation! The response to the short (throughout the US and internationally) has been really heartening, and we’re pumped about the possibility of exploring the legend with more depth and scope. Our goal, like with the short, is to make something that is both a slow-burn creepy urban legend and a relentless action horror movie.

WP: How enjoyable – or challenging – did you find the experience of getting this film completed? 

EB: There’s nothing better than hanging out in the middle of the woods and making a movie with your creative friends. It was an aggressive shooting schedule (the whole film was produced with two overnights), but we all went into the trenches together and made it happen.

WP: Finally, horror goes through various waves and trends like any other genre – but in your opinion, how do you rate the quality of the horror cinema we have been getting over the past five years or so? And what impact, if any, has this had on you as a filmmaker? 

EB: I think we’ve gotten some real gems in the last few years. One of my favorites is It Follows. It so elegantly captures a very specific and effective tone that feels more like a nightmare than anything I’ve ever seen. The purposeful anachronisms, dreamy cinematography, and amazing score all contribute to this awesome experience.

WP: Thank you very much for your time, and good luck!

Look out for She Came From the Woods on the festival circuit over the coming year. For more information on the film, keep up with Erik on Twitter: @ErikCBloomquist.

S&M: Les Sadiques (2016)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

It’s a very rare thing indeed to see a filmmaker working in the styles so far chosen by director Alex Bakshaev in his career to date. His last film, The Devil of Kreuzberg, was to my mind a languid and stylish love letter to Jean Rollin; in S&M, Les Sadiques, we have a film not only openly dedicated to Jess Franco, but one clearly taking its visual cues from Uncle Jess – and on a budget of a mere 250 Euros, working within the confines of a budget which would startle even Franco. However, in common with The Devil of Kreuzberg, there’s so much evident love for source material which doesn’t tend to hold much sway over modern filmmakers, that it’s impossible not to be impressed and to an extent, entranced by the results.

Marie (Nadine Pape) is a young girl looking for a place to stay in Berlin, having fled from a troubled home life with her father. But try as she might, her attempts to find somewhere to crash end in disaster, and she’s about to bed down on a stairwell when she encounters Sandra (the fabulous Sandra Bourdonnec). Sandra offers her a place to stay, but her interest in Marie is clearly far from platonic; fascinated by the older woman’s repertoire and career as an erotic photographer, as well as beholden to her for a comfortable place to live, she decides to stick around. Gradually, Sandra begins to extol her philosophy on sex and power, revealing that she does her job so well because she understands the importance of controlling her environment, and her subjects. Soon working alongside Sandra as a kind of honey trap to get otherwise unwitting subjects back to Sandra’s studio, Marie soon begins to explore her own sadistic impulses. However, the course of true love never did run smooth, and the outside world begins to impinge on the two women’s pursuits in a series of intrusive ways.

I mentioned Jess Franco earlier, and in terms of the influences of particular films I feel that there are several similarities between Les Sadiques and Eugenie De Sade, right down to some of the visuals (the clothing worn by the two women looks very similar to that worn by Soledad Miranda in some of her scenes – as do some of Nadine Pape’s poses – and who in their right mind could ever have a problem with that?) Of course, Franco took his cues from De Sade himself, although he took the Marquis’s ideas in rather different directions, and aside from the fact that Marie can be seen actually reading de Sade, this film is also about transforming some of de Sade’s ideas and placing them in a contemporary setting. In some respects Sandra’s character is like Madame de Saint-Ange, a homeowner whose erotic pursuits influence the education of a rather naive young girl, for instance.

But as much as Jess Franco – and de Sade – are acknowledged influences on S&M: Les Sadiques, the overall style of the film is less uproarious than many a Jess Franco film, generally preferring atmosphere over action, and developing said atmosphere in meticulous ways. Whilst a sexual film in terms of its themes, the director is very selective about what is shown, though without shying away from nudity and encompassing one quite startling and brutal scene, too. The topics of control and consent are de facto explored here, though is a subtle array of ways. There is, again, a touch of magic in how Bakshaev manages to shoot Berlin, making the city look by turns very modern and recognisable, but then timeless, expressed through a series of interesting shots. The atmosphere also owes a great deal to the film’s minimal dialogue – sometimes we do not hear what characters are saying at all as they are not miked – and exposition. We simply accept Sandra and Marie’s relationship grows seemingly out of nowhere, for instance, because it just works that way, and it’s plausible within the confines of the film’s universe. The camera lingers on facial expressions and gestures in a very effective way too, adding to the pleasingly disorientating effect of the filming style overall. This is altogether quieter than the films which have inspired Les Sadiques, but genuinely works well and showcases a confident, ambitious set of attitudes to making cinema. A special mention has to go to Sandra Bourdonnec here, too, who is joined by a great cast but whose magnetism is quite unlike anything else on the screen: the star of The Devil of Kreuzberg exudes the kind of smouldering appeal which would not look amiss in any of the classic Euro horror or arthouse cinema we know and love.

Whilst S&M: Les Sadiques will have some problems finding its audience, perhaps being too arty for some and too challenging for others, I feel that fans of the kinds of Euro cinema mentioned above will be beguiled by Bakshaev’s zeal for homage and atmospherics, and impressed by his ability to make something which is just so deliberately different. 250 Euros is a ridiculously small budget, but yet he’s managed to do a great deal with it; I can only hope that more funding comes his way, and soon, as I’m genuinely gratified that someone out there is making films like this, so completely unconcerned with the more tedious aspects of the current cinematic zeitgeist.

 

 

 

 

So long then, Ash Williams…

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

“Big props to fans for the effort, but I’m retired as Ash.” [Bruce Campbell on Twitter, 23th April 2018].

This message on the social networking site came in the wake of a wave of fan activity as people tried – and, it seems, failed – to convince the TV channel Starz not to cancel the Ash vs. Evil Dead series. Starz have decided to call it a day, citing poor viewing figures as the reason the show has to go. ‘Poor viewing figures’ is of course a relative term; then again, maybe I’m in a bubble here, because everyone I’ve ever heard from loved the show and watched it religiously. Regardless, Series Three is where we’re going to be leaving it, and off the back of Starz’s decision, the star of the show has confirmed that he’s now done with his most famous role for good.

Yes, this is disappointing, and yes, I feel that there are still more ideas that the Raimi brothers could have added in subsequent series, but perhaps we’re looking at it the wrong way. We might do best to see the show as an unexpected bonus. Fans of Ash vs. Evil Dead are justifiably sad that we won’t be seeing more from this extension of the ED universe, but a few short years ago, we didn’t have any idea we’d really ever see Ash taking on the Deadites in his own inimitable way again anyway.

Rumours of an Evil Dead IV have been turning up reliably every few years, but nothing concrete has ever really come along to substantiate these. Personally, I feel like it was an either/or thing with the Evil Dead remake in 2013 – and we ended up with the remake, which aside from that (rather head-scratching) Bruce Campbell cameo after the end credits, moved things in a different direction, even though it ostensibly used the same mythology. Gone was the splatstick and the one-liners which we’d left off with after Evil Dead III; we were back with an altogether grislier spin which dispensed with the comedy altogether. If this was to be our last encounter with the Necronomicon, then we’d be ending on a very different note to what we’d come to expect from Raimi and Campbell – which sat a little awkwardly with many people, myself included.

And then, seemingly out of the blue, years after the remake had come and gone, Ash was back – and back as a character, not a cameo. It was a boon. The TV show, as you might expect given the names behind it, picks up very much in the vein of Army of Darkness, and feels like an organic extension of the Evil Dead universe which is clearly at ease with itself, knowing just where to joke and where to (literally) douse the camera in blood. In effect, it’s the perfect cocktail of elements for long-term fans of the films, who have long appreciated the progression from gory, cartoonish violence in the original film to black comedy in the third. You can also see a clear line of descent from the underappreciated 2007 film My Name is Bruce, perhaps even more clearly given the ways some fans demand Campbell plays Williams and how, when it comes down to it, he has fun obliging – well, up until a point, that is. But the apparent ease and enjoyment Campbell communicates on screen, when playing a role which relates to Evil Dead, has definitely translated successfully to the small screen.

All of this helps the show to be so much damn fun to watch, but the writing itself has added a wealth of zany, but (within a world where a whole host of demonic entities shred their way into smalltown USA) plausible extensions to the 1981 screenplay. The Necronomicon is back – read from at the start of Series One in the ultimate in bad drunk decision-making – but there’s far more. Raimi adds plot elements which relate to the nature of whatever-there-is outside the limits of our world, with new demonic characters to rock the boat. Yes, there are a thousand nods to the films (hello, Linda!) but there’s more than enough new material here. Lucy Lawless as Ruby deserves a special mention for bringing the camp kick-ass she perfected in her Xena days into a world drenched with black magic and flailing innards, and she works as a great foil to Ash and his friends throughout the series. As for his friends, I think Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) are anything but mere sidekicks, with each of them following their own path and, as things go on, getting their own plotlines too – all of which flesh out the characterisation of the show to just the right degree, never too emotional, nor two-dimensional. You feel you know these people, and you are rooting for them as they open portals and hack off Deadite heads. There isn’t a pointless character or scene written, the plot itself knows just when and how often to throw in the batshit crazy, and the jokes all land effortlessly. In truth, I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a horror spin-off more than this one. I definitely haven’t ever laughed more: the episode where Ash gets himself wedged into a man’s torso in the local morgue had me on the floor, hurt my ribs and made me chuckle for days afterwards. I’m not exaggerating. It really hurt.

So with all of that said, how come I’m not howling with indignation at the show’s cancellation? Well, part of me is, absolutely, as the tyranny of ‘viewing figures’ is only a limited measure of how a show is doing, really, if you could only wait and see. Movies which sink at the Box Office often rejuvenate on DVD and merchandise sales. But it seems pretty impossible that my indignation here would achieve anything, and now that Bruce himself has closed the door, we would be better off accepting that we’re done here. And, whilst I have confidence in Sam and Ivan Raimi – alongside the rest of the talented writers they’ve worked with on the show – you never know what market forces and other factors can throw at you; a potential universe where we’re on Series Ten and the well is running dry sounds pretty unappealing, even if not quite ‘Dark Ones walking the earth’ unappealing. The worst case scenario is a horror version of The Big Bang Theory, which at least we’re definitely being spared.

I can say, hand on heart, that in the three seasons of Ash vs. Evil Dead I have never been bored, nor felt that it was all getting too tried-and-tested. Each of the series I could happily watch over, which I will be doing, as I’m sure I will have missed one brilliant little detail or a rejoinder here and there. This may be of small consolation to the actors and writers who are now out of a job, sure, but I really hope that the show’s reputation propels them on to something else, and very soon.

Plus, you know, Ash Williams isn’t really going anywhere. Three classic films over nearly four decades, three great TV series, and a wealth of fan lit and spin-offs later, he’s going to remain one of horror’s favourite everyday guys forever. We love him because he’s normal, he’s fallible, he makes stupid decisions, but he’s also brave-to-the-point-of-stupider, fearless and funny. He has honour, he has integrity, and he’s aware of his own flaws, as well as in the next moment being dementedly self-confident. Ash is so well-loved because he’s the kind of guy you’d want to be around if the world ended. And, as Ash vs. Evil Dead has boosted that appeal in all sorts of expected and unexpected ways, we owe it a lot of credit and a big thanks too, even if it’s not sticking around as long as we’d like.

 

An Interview with Ryan Hendrick, director of Sundown (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

We receive a lot of films for consideration at Warped Perspective, and on occasion, we receive material which seems to be quite a way outside of the usual styles and genres we typically feature. This is, of course, no bad thing, and a film we received recently marked itself out as something altogether quieter and subtler than a lot of our usual fare. A thought-provoking, picturesque little film, Sundown (2017) is currently under consideration for a range of upcoming film festivals, and I spoke to director and writer Ryan Hendrick about his project.

Firstly tell us about the story behind the film, and why you wanted to tell it. 

I want to tell a story about the conventions of life, death and mortality. My first short film, Choices, had been a more introspective look set at the point of death and was very philosophical; here I wanted to tell a more realistic human connection story. It had occurred to me that in today’s society it is assumed the old and elderly know about death, as if they somehow have learnt how to accept death. I wanted to address that, and I decided to tackle that by having an older character seek insight from someone younger.

The location of the film is very picturesque and clearly important to the story. Tell us how you found it. 

The initial concept for Sundown came to me whilst I was visiting the Isle of Iona in the Scottish Hebrides some years ago. I witnessed the most spectacular sunsets night after night. It really added perspective on life and how complicated our lives and society have become, yet there is a simplistic beauty about the natural world that operates on a grand scale. “In that moment I feel timeless,” says Abi in the film, and that was true of my own experience. Every Scottish island is unique and Iona is no exception. It is quiet, tranquil and feels as if it exists outside of the modern world, and that was the atmosphere and setting that this story required.

Can you tell us any more about the character of Abi?

Although we follow William through his own journey, to me, Abi is the central character of Sundown. She exists in various forms and everything driving William on this journey connects directly back to Abi’s own journey. It’s very hard to say in specifics without giving the entire film away. She is part mystery, part emotional truth – to the audience and to William.

What do you hope audiences will take away from your film?

I hope audiences are taken on this journey with these characters, allowing them to experience a slower pace of life that is very deliberately built into the fabric of the film and come out emotionally connected to the characters, their story, the environment and more importantly, I hope it resonates with their own hopes and fears. We all fear our own mortality and all must learn to accept and incorporate it into our existence.

In terms of you as a filmmaker, what are your influences – and where do you hope to go next?

My influences come straight from my emotions. I always start creatively with an emotion or tone I want to convey before exploring a narrative. I am drawn to all sorts of storylines and themes, but they key for me is to tell them with a sense of romantic optimism. Sundown could easily have been a depressing and stark social realistic arthouse film, but I want to inspire audiences, make them feel a range of emotions.

Next up for me is my first feature Journey Bound, a romantic comedy road movie set in the Scottish Highlands. My love letter to Scotland and to it’s golden era of cinema (Whisky Galore, Local Hero, The Maggie). It’s taken us years to get this film off the ground and I can’t wait to start shooting later this year.

How challenging is making a film in the current climate, and how can filmmakers and fans alike best support this climate?

Independent Cinema especially in the current climate is tough. We exist in a time of mega-large blockbusters and more online content than ever before. Filmmakers needs to knuckle down and understand filmmaking as a business a lot more. I meet more and more emerging filmmakers that don’t have the first idea of tackling this as a business. Fans just need to keep watching films. Go to the cinema and see others films that aren’t the latest super hero blockbuster, take a chance on something you maybe haven’t heard of, especially when scrolling platforms at home like Netflix or Amazon. At the end of the day, as filmmakers we tell our stories for you as much as we do for ourselves.

Thanks to Ryan Hendrick and Magic Monkey films. You can find out more here.

The Old Dark House (1932)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

Old Dark Houses are a horror cinema staple, bequeathed to the genre by Gothic literature, penny dreadfuls and all manner of other earlier terrors in print. Perhaps surprisingly, then, this particular Old Dark House (1932) is based on a J. B. Priestley novel, Benighted, written just five years previously. Priestley is better known for social realism than involvement in early horror cinema, but it’s after all via his story that we begin this trip through deepest, darkest Wales.

A bickering married couple, Philip and Margaret Waverton, together with a rather less-concerned and war-weary companion named Penderel, are on their way to Shrewsbury during a storm, in an era before cars came with windows. They’re cold, miserable and – soon – the worsening weather strands them at a remote house, where they’re forced to seek shelter. The inmates of this house are interesting folk, to say the least. The head of the household seems to be Horace Femm (Ernest Thesiger), who lives with his cantankerous, hard-of-hearing sister Rebecca (Eva Moore) and a voiceless servant, Morgan (Boris Karloff). After a small amount of disagreement on whether the three strangers should be allowed to stay or not, Horace assents, offering them hospitality in the form of a place at the fire, and a shot of gin. He’s a curious character: somewhat effete, definitely morbid but overall, fairly accommodating compared to his sister, who is soon regaling the guests with the awful godlessness of everyone who lives in the house, except her.

A strange night begins to unfold. Soon, two more travellers are hammering at the door, and they also get a grudging welcome. The conversation begins to flow, as does the booze – which isn’t a good thing where the thirsty butler Morgan is concerned. Oh, and then there’s the small matter of the elderly father ensconced upstairs (and is he the only person up there?)

As an exercise in atmosphere, and an important chapter in the rise of Universal Studios as an influential force in spooky cinema, The Old Dark House is very endearing. Director James Whale had already cut his teeth on the innovative use of sound and shadow in Frankenstein the year before, and although the film under consideration here is rather more subtle and realistic than that particular monster flick, it does bear a lot of the same hallmarks. The script here – closely following the novel – works a treat, with a terse, acerbic note throughout and some memorable lines, particularly from the character of Rebecca, who takes some time out from grumbling to mutter portentous lines to the terrified guests. But then there’s Horace Femm, whose every line and gesture here is a charm. Thesiger, contemporary and correspondent of ‘Great Beast’ Aleister Crowley, comes across as a cipher for a bygone age, all sardonic wit and rarefied manners. Karloff has little to do but loom and brawl in this film, but as ever, he has an enjoyable presence.

There’s more to this film than simply suspense and mild scares, mind, and one of the reasons it’s so engrossing is in how it sits squarely between the stage traditions of the late nineteenth century and the relatively new form of film. Interestingly, there’s a framed portrait of Queen Victoria in one of the bedrooms. Some of the scenes are positively vaudevillian in style, with a few physical jerks, lines played for laughs and that old chestnut, the partially-hearing character, who continually misinterprets what’s been said to them. Also, despite being an American production, the film feels charmingly British, too; the regular conversations about the bad weather are a dead giveaway, and then there is the range of visitors from different regions of the UK, including a heavily-stereotyped Yorkshireman who looks for all the world like a proto-Peter Kay (noting the fact that Kay is actually from the ‘wrong’ county next door). There are a few lines relating to the changing world of the mid-thirties, too, and although this isn’t exactly a film steeped in social commentary, there’s still mention of the world of “factories, and cheap advertising, and money-grubbing” going on far outside the house’s walls, as well as the war-damaged Penderel (Melvyn Douglas) who seeks something better for himself after this hellish night at the house is over and done with.

Although this may be a film which has little in common either thematically or stylistically with the vast majority of modern cinema and may seem like a reach for some, I still feel that it’s worthwhile for modern audiences. It’s a quaint melting pot of ambience, drama and classic cinema aesthetics in an unusual setting, as well as an engaging yarn and a cool film history lesson. Whilst The Old Dark House certainly isn’t the only old dark house out there (nor even the only film by that title) it’s nonetheless deserving of its reputation. The upcoming 4K Eureka release is of a very high quality, doesn’t look like a film which is around eighty-five years old, and comes with newly-commissioned artwork by established visual artist Graham Humphreys. If you’ve missed out on this one in the past, then this new deluxe edition would definitely come recommended.

The Old Dark House – 4K edition – will be released by Eureka Entertainment on 27th April 2018.

 

A Brilliant Monster (2018)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

“Where do the ideas come from?” It’s a standard question which, for many people working in the creative industries, there’s probably never a standard answer; however, in the new indie movie A Brilliant Monster, the trials and tribulations of continually coming up with workable new projects is given a dark, original twist. It’s an original idea about getting original ideas, if you will.

We begin with a man in what looks like Scenes of Crime protective garb, cleaning up an impounded vehicle with the air of a man who knows exactly what he’s doing. This is our first introduction to our main character, Mitch Stockridge (Dennis Friebe), who isn’t in fact in law enforcement, or clean-up operations – he’s actually a self-help guru, an esteemed popular author at the top of his game. So why the surreptitious spring clean? Well, according to his ex-girlfriend Sophie (Alea Figueroa), Mitch isn’t exactly the guy the world thinks he is. As a complainant to the police, she begins to spill details of what life with him was really like, claiming his participation in certain criminal acts. One of the investigators is a bit of a Mitch Stockridge fan, and simply can’t believe what he’s hearing, but co-investigator Abby (Joy Kigin) is a little more amenable to what Sophie has to say, and begins to pursue the case.

All of this soon begins to beg the question: just where does Mitch – a man deeply damaged by events in his childhood, according to Sophie – find all of this inspiration to help others? His books are popular – so popular, that people stop him on the streets to tell him how much he’s meant to them. Meanwhile, he has new writing projects on the horizon and deadlines to keep: as we gradually begin to hear more from Mitch himself, we get a sense of the very real pressures in his own life, from looking after his elderly father to keeping his publisher at bay. And yet somehow, he’s able to channel all of his own frustrations into something positive. How?

If I was expecting this to segue straight into a ‘good guy by day, killer by night’ routine, then I’m happy to say I was disappointed. The ways in which A Brilliant Monster tackles its theme of the creative process is rather more exploratory than that; as well as shifting tack quite early on to embed a surprise element, it also uses quite an ambitious framework, weaving in flashback from multiple points into real time and playing with lighting/shooting to create an impressive display of shooting styles. To an extent, the film’s own creative shift is hamstrung by its low budget, sure, but it opts for the right approach here, keeping things low-key and relying more on showing us the behaviour of people in these extraordinary circumstances than focusing on the use of effects.

This behaviour is refracted through an earthy, plausible script which generally works very well – a definite plus, given that this film really lives or dies by its dialogue. On occasion, the repetitive “where do you get the ideas?” line coming from different players can be a little excessive – A Brilliant Monster is capable of establishing its themes beyond doubt without this repetition – but otherwise, the script is good at balancing its touches of humour against moving the narrative forwards. Along the way, it asks some interesting questions and raises some interesting points. For example, the film shows how someone’s celebrity status can impair our judgement of them: the first cop on the case cannot really believe that a famous author could behave in a criminal way, later characters feel just the same way regardless of their backgrounds, and this certainty that status = irreproachable conduct is toyed with throughout the film. People are just seduced by Mitch’s fame; they can’t really see any further. But perhaps more tellingly, A Brilliant Monster looks at the grotesque side of the creative process: in this process, women seem to fare particularly badly (a grisly literal riff on the idea of the ‘muse’ maybe) but as the stakes get higher, Mitch is forced to make ever more difficult tactical decisions in return for what he needs as a writer. The relationship between him, his past, his purpose in writing and his inspiration are given an engaging treatment here.

Whilst I wasn’t quite ready to buy cop Abby’s immediate vendetta against Mitch Stockridge – though to be fair, this is contextualised later – this is only one weak link in what is otherwise an enjoyable, innovative tale about the pressures to create and the fallout of ‘success’. Making the central character a self-help guru is an inspired and tongue-in-cheek move; the grand divide between words and deeds is given a compelling twist in A Brilliant Monster, where what you see isn’t always what you get.

A Brilliant Monster is scheduled for release on 1st December 2018 (in the US). 

 

The Stone Tide: Adventures at the End of the World by Gareth E. Rees

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

“Twenty years on there seemed much more of this world behind me than in front of me. I wandered a crumbling landscape busy with ghosts, where every object spoke of what had passed and all lines led back into history.”

When we consider different modes of writing, we probably have a number of preconceived rules in our heads: an autobiography has to contain a certain amount of personal information, a history has to be based firmly in verifiable fact, and so on. Whilst these kinds of definitions clearly have their usefulness, sometimes the best writing jolts us out of this kind of glib acceptance and makes us reconsider what we’re being told, and how we’re being told it. This brings me to a very unusual piece of writing – The Stone Tide, a book which encompasses several genres from travel guide to confessional with many more besides, and does so to intriguing, thought-provoking and deeply moving effect.

The book starts with a house move from London to Hastings – a quaint seaside resort in England, where the author and his wife (and two children) have purchased a ‘fixer-upper’, one of those houses where the point between moving in and ‘finished’ ever recedes into the distance. This house, with all of its decades of unharvested nooks and life stories, takes on an almost sentient role in the early chapters of the The Stone Tide, always with an ace up the sleeve to unpick hard work or destabilise its new inmates, in ways which reach towards the supernatural on several occasions, though you come to understand early on that any retelling of these events is often enmeshed with mordant flights of fancy, coming to the page in anything but a straightforward way. The author soon seeks solace away from these four walls by taking the sea air – but in doing so, prompts a flood of painful memories of the loss of a friend, Mike, some twenty years previously.

Suddenly finding himself thinking again about this loss, coming at a point when the day-to-day is growing increasingly testing, and when there’s another book – but what kind of book? – to be written, forms the backbone of this novel. This is not one story, but rather a very broad array of intermingled stories; within these, factual start-points give way to imaginative leaps, with conversations embellished or invented, and mundane concerns spliced with fantastical additions. At the heart of all of this is Hastings itself, which receives a hauntological treatment along the way: for a small seaside place, it has a surprisingly chequered history, and once became a kind of impromptu hotbed for British occultism.

Amongst other things, it was the last residence of the infamous ‘Great Beast’ Aleister Crowley, a character for whom death hasn’t been much of an impediment to his notoriety, and the last years of Crowley’s life are often significant in The Stone Tide. Other notorious Hastings alumni crop up too, until we have a small gathering of notables being invoked and repositioned as characters in the narrative, interrogating one another as well as asking profound questions about time and loss. A number of deeply engaging, winsome skits on local history – such as the story of Hannah Weller – are also added. This provides a rich, expansive overall effect, one which seems to sprawl in places, but comes together seamlessly, revealing a complex structure and not just breadth of information. Added to this imaginative set of histories are various flights of fancy which had followed the author since childhood: now that he has been reminded of something devastating from his youth, lots of the old monsters-under-the-bed (or at least, giant sofa-headed eels which have lain dormant) are re-emerging. The ridiculous and the sublime are often together in this book. Where else would Edward I and Rod Hull ever find themselves in conversation? And yet, somehow, within this genre-rules free zone, it all makes a kind of ad hoc perfect sense.

All of this is refracted through Rees himself of course, in candid and self-deprecating fashion which weaves throughout the book. It’s hard, on reflection, to imagine another writer being able to weave all of these separate elements into one place in this way. The prose is rich and evocative, but Rees retains a conversational tone which is very disarming, and although what he is considering at length here can weigh very heavily there are frequent pinpricks of humour – even when things are taking a very bleak turn indeed, as they often do here. This kind of combination of observation and introspection makes parts of the book feel like one of those pub conversations where you almost peer into a profound truth which you know you can’t quite grasp, and which so many others have failed to quite-grasp before you. I’ll admit, parts of the book really got under my skin and made me feel very sad, but then other aspects of it are so sardonically funny that perhaps all you can do is laugh in the end.

An ingenious meld of fact, fiction and various unrealities, The Stone Tide is a bold and inventive read, incredibly imaginative and poignant. Fantastical it may be and may be often, but at its core it’s an ardently honest book and I thoroughly reading enjoyed it. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything quite like it.

The Stone Tide: Adventures at the End of the World by Gareth E. Rees is available via Influx Press. Rees also curates a website of potential interest: Unofficial Britain, which you can check out here.

Ghost Stories (2017)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

The Ghost Stories film comes to us off the back of a much-praised stage play of the same title by two of our finest writers, Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dyson: at the time it was doing the rounds some years ago, I managed to immure myself against hearing even the barest hint of what it was all about, in the hopes that I’d get to go and see it (which I didn’t) whilst having no expectations which could spoil the show. Happily, I’ve managed to go on hearing nothing at all ahead of seeing the film. This is where I think it’s only fair to extend the same courtesy to anyone who might be reading this. In order to discuss Ghost Stories in any meaningful way, I’m going to have to talk about what happens and how it plays out. This will by no means be a plot synopsis, but nonetheless this review may contain mild spoilers from here on in.

The basic set-up is this: lapsed Jew Professor Philip Goodman (Nyman) has spent his professional and academic life trying to compensate for an unhappy upbringing, where his family’s religious values clashed with the world as he came to understand it. After a revelatory moment as a child watching the TV sceptic Charles Cameron disproving all manner of supernatural phenomena, citing people’s ‘existential terror’ as the reason they are so ready to believe in the impossible, Goodman sets to very similar work, dismantling people’s beliefs for a TV show of his very own (in an uncomfortable early scene where he storms the stage at a spiritual mediumship event, further devastating an already devastated bereaved mother in the process; it seems the medium and the sceptic are all too ready to tread on her feelings for their own agendas, and I found it one of the hardest scenes in the film to watch.)

The funny thing is, Cameron himself had disappeared into obscurity in mysterious circumstances of his own decades previously – so Goodman is astounded to receive (earthly) communication from the still-living Cameron (Leonard Byrne) who wants to speak with him. He tells Goodman that, during his professional career, he encountered three cases which assured him that his whole world view had been wrong – that there were things out there which cannot be easily explained. Investigate them for yourself, he tells the younger man, and then come and talk to me. Duly, though with the somewhat frustrated air of a man who has met one of his heroes and come away disappointed, Goodman agrees to seek out and speak to the people in each case.

Ah, the portmanteau film: it’s well known that Nyman, and Dyson (as can be seen from the earliest League of Gentlemen days) are big fans of 70s heyday British horror, and the three-in-one framework here is worthy – and reminiscent – of the old Amicus films. In each of the three stories Goodman hears, we are transported into the situation each new man reports; these cover a range of different phenomena. Tony Matthews (Paul Whitehouse) relates a story of a frightening experience as a nightwatchman; Simon Rifkind (Alex Lawther) talks about what goes on in the woods, and finally businessman Mike Priddle (Martin Freeman) explains about a night he felt deeply unsafe at home…in each case, Goodman is primed to dismiss their accounts as the ramblings of trauma, addiction, guilt, grief – you name it. But then odd phenomena begin to leech into his own life, and he’s forced to examine his own motivations, as he comes to terms with how he has impacted upon the lives of others.

There are a great many things in favour of this film, and chief amongst those is – for me – in its visual trickery. The flashy BOO! scenes which punctuate the film (no doubt after the stage play, which itself probably picked up a lot of cues from that stalwart of horror theatre, The Woman in Black) I could take or leave. I find them too easy to see coming, too much more about the reflexes than the imagination. However, what these BOO! moments certainly do achieve is to set you on edge, so that your brain is ready to see things which aren’t there. I haven’t read up on the making of the film, but I’m willing to bet all or at least most of these tricks of the eye are deliberate. ‘The brain sees what it wants to see’, and so on. There are also several nods to other classic British ghost tales – which I won’t name here – but these work with the tales at hand, and don’t feel unnecessarily tacked on. I tell you what else I thought of, and I might be alone in this, but if you’ve ever read the (terrifying) series of books issued by Fortean Times called ‘It Happened To Me’, where utterly ordinary people write in with their supernatural experiences – some of the tales in the film are strongly reminiscent of stories I’ve read there, particularly the middle story, though this may of course be entirely coincidental. In any case, it’s great to see a cast of such well-known British actors, often comedy actors, taking on something quite as dark as Ghost Stories and doing a superb job, even managing to blend in a few moments of gallows humour without dissipating the horror.

However, the weight of expectation with films like this, particularly after having waited so long to find out what all the fuss was about, means I do have some nagging issues with the film as a whole. [Final warning on spoilers ahead.] Firstly, I understand completely that the writers want to resolve things in such a way that they don’t simply cede to the whole ‘and it was REAL!’ shtick, any more than it’d be sane to roll credits on a Bobby Ewing ending, but to get us to this quite neat – yes, clever – yes, but still ambiguous ending, I felt the film was…well, the only way I can explain it is to say it’s reactionary, in the sense that it turns all of these stories and fears into the residual agonies of a suicidal man, and in fact the whole film seems to point to him wanting to die and going through all of this purgatorial suffering because of something he didn’t do as a terrified, victimised child. It’s hardly the most eloquent thing to say, but it feels so… mean-spirited somehow, even though I am fully aware that a horror film has no duty to be nice and even-handed. I’m also torn on the whole ‘fourth wall’ thing in the final act – always a fraught decision, even if a useful bridging device between straightforward supernatural horror and the existential torture of the ending.

So, for me, Ghost Stories is a film which does many things superbly well, pays its dues, certainly kept my attention, led to some fantastically creepy moments, but also slathers on a veneer of human nastiness that I am finding unusually bitter, in a way which actually surprises me.

Ghost Stories (2017) is on general release in UK cinemas now.